


The Stars Might Stick You Where You Stand

by methylethyl



Series: The Stars 'Verse [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-07 23:47:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylethyl/pseuds/methylethyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the fall of Torchwood One, Jack Harkness went to ask Torchwood Three for a job. He didn’t expect to fall a little bit in love with its director, the practical and ever-calm Ianto Jones. He also probably didn’t expect that Ianto Jones would end up holding the answers to his most precious secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be posting one part every day until we get to the end. Many thanks to black_k_kat for the timely beta!

 

_Jack stares, his limbs feeling numb, his stomach churning. He can’t believe it. Eight months since Jack had raced Gray through the park, only to look back and find him gone, vanished into thin air, and suddenly Gray is walking out of the woods, his Gray, with the same curly light brown hair and skinny frame and—_  


_“Gray! Gray!”_

_—Jack’s bare feet pounding across the yard, grass wet and cold in the night—_

_—Gray is snatched up before his eyes by a faceless suit, and Gray screams, struggles—_

_—Jack has to get to him—_

_—give him retcon, he can’t remember this—_

_“Gray!”_

_—Gray crying, shrieking Jack’s name—_

_—his brother, his little brother, he has to get him back, he can’t lose him now, he’s only just gotten him back—_

_—a dark van—_

_—sirens—_

_—a syringe pressed into Gray’s neck—_

_“Gray! Let me go, let me go, give my brother—Gray!”_

_—sobbing—_

_—block letters on the side of the car—_

_TORCHWOOD_

_—darkness._


	2. Ianto

Ianto is wrestling with a Weevil who is rather intent on his neck, having lost his grip on his gun when a second one had come charging out of nowhere, and he’s just about to have his neck chewed out when all of a sudden there’s a distinctly human battle-cry, and then a heavy body lands on top of the Weevil and the two roll away, leaving Ianto breathless.

There’s a man in a navy blue greatcoat wrestling the Weevil, quite well. He appears to be bulkier than Ianto, and good at hand-to-hand combat.

Ianto retrieves his gun as the man lets out a yell and tries to jerk away, and loses the advantage. Ianto then walks around so that he’s got a good angle, aims the gun, and shoots the Weevil in the head.

“ _Nice_ ,” says the man, teeth flashing white in the dark.

“The typical response is ‘oh God, help me, the teeth,” Ianto replies. He doesn’t put the gun away.

The man gets to his feet quickly, in the sort of way that you do when you’re too pumped up on adrenaline to feel the pain yet, and holds out a hand. “Cap’n Jack Harkness. You’ll find I’m not your typical person.”

Ianto shakes the hand, eyes straying to Captain Harkness’ shoulder.

“Atypical in that you call yourself ‘Captain’ when the ranking on your coat is actually that of a Group Captain?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Captain Harkness flashes him a megawatt grin. “‘Captain’ sounds so much cooler, doesn’t it?”

“Infinitely,” Ianto says flatly.

Captain Harkness laughs.

“It was nice to meet you, Captain Harkness,” Ianto says with his usual politeness. “I appreciate your help, but I’ll carry on from here.”

“You don’t want a hand with these bodies?” Captain Harkness asks, indicating the two dead Weevils on the grass.

“I’ll manage,” Ianto replies.

When he gets back from lugging the first dead Weevil to the SUV, Captain Harkness has gone.

 

The entire drive back to the Hub, Ianto ponders Captain Jack Harkness. Everything is cleared up when he runs a search for the man in his database.

_Torchwood One field agent—five years—former RAF—parents in America—born in Cardiff—younger brother Gray—disappeared at age eight—_

_Gray Harkness_.

Ianto frowns as the name rings a bell. Moments later he keys into his own private database, does a search, and then everything makes sense.

 

Captain Jack Harkness strolls into the tourist office the next day, bemusedly fingers the HELP YOURSELF! sign taped to the rack of brochures, glances at the enormous map of Cardiff on the wall with little flags pinned to popular locations, and then looks at the camera and waves cheerily.

Following this, he sits down and waits.

Ianto sighs, pushes himself out of his chair, and goes up to find out what he wants.

“Whoa,” Captain Harkness says, when Ianto emerges. “I did _not_ get to fully appreciate you in a suit last night. Tell me you dress like this every day.”

“Occasionally I wear a waistcoat,” Ianto replies. “I hope the image isn’t too much for you.”

Captain Harkness’ beaming face takes on a distinctly leer-like quality. “Not at all.”

“Can I help you, Captain Harkness?” Ianto asks.

“Call me Jack,” Captain Harkness says.

“Can I help you, _Jack?_ ”

Jack wiggles his eyebrows. “I certainly hope so.”

Ianto sighs.

Jack loses the leer and in its place is a wry, slightly tired smile. He leans forward, bracing his hands on the table, and only a hint of his previous joviality remains on his face. The transformation is somewhat startling.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” he tells Ianto. “We both know that you’ve run your searches on me and you could probably tell me everything from who was on my lunchbox when I was eight to where I was when I got my first blowjob. You know I’m from Torchwood One, and you know that I’ve got an excellent record as a field agent. You probably already know that I’m going to ask you to hire me—am I right?”

Ianto nods.

Jack grins. “I thought so. Even over at One, we knew about you. People said Yvonne would have shut you down years ago, if she wasn’t dead terrified that you’d retaliate by taking over the world in twelve hours flat.”

“Jack, while I appreciate the attempts at flattery, this is not at all my definition of ‘cutting to the chase’,” Ianto says, raising his eyebrows.

He doesn’t know if he wants to hire Jack.  He doesn’t know why Jack _wants_ to be hired.

“Direct,” Jack says, grinning. “I like that in a man.”

Ianto gives him a flat look.

“I have a truckload of artifacts scavenged from the wreckage of Torchwood One,” Jack informs him. “Hire me, and they’re yours.”

Ianto allows Jack to show him the sampling of artifacts that he’s brought with him, nodding and hmm-ing along as Jack, showmanship clearly his element, describes and gestures with enthusiasm. It becomes obvious that Jack’s standard gimmick is to impress and overwhelm people, and then be the one to catch them, thus inciting trust and wonder.

Ianto is not impressed. He is not overwhelmed.

He does not comment when Jack shows him a ‘bomb-neutralizer’ that is actually an Ulluri water bottle, or a ‘vaporizer’ that is actually a mucus-clearer. He allows Jack to finish with a flourish and a cocksure look on his face, lets the silence hang for a moment, and then speaks.

“You still haven’t told me why you want to work here.”

Jack blinks, thrown for only the briefest of seconds, and then he shrugs and adopts a wry look. “What else am I going to do with my life?” Then another grin flashes across his face, quick as lightning. “And it’s not everyone who gets to work under a boss as cute as you.”

Jack isn’t telling him the truth. However, Ianto thinks he already knows the truth.

“Give me a few days to consider it and speak with my team,” he replies. “I’ll give you a decision by Friday.”

Jack _bounces_.

“Great!” he says happily, practically cartoon-like in his excitement. Before Ianto’s even registered that it’s happening, Jack’s leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his lips. “I’ll see you on Friday!”

Ianto stands frozen to the spot as Jack goes jauntily on his way out of the tourist office, and is just about to reach up and touch his fingers to his lips when he catches himself. He frowns, straightens a stack of brochures, then goes back down to the Hub.

 

Ianto asks his team.

Owen says, “The temp who came and helped out when Suzie broke her leg, she mentioned a Jack Harkness once. Says he sleeps with anything. Better castrate him before you hire him.”

“I’d fuck him,” Suzie says, taking a bite of her sticky bun and nodding at the photo of Jack she’s pulled up on her screen. “Plus, he looks the rugby type. Good for going on Weevil calls.”

Tosh claims to not mind in front of the others, but later in Ianto’s office, haltingly questions the wisdom of bring in someone from Torchwood One.

 

“You’re hired,” Ianto tells Jack, Friday morning.

Jack kisses Ianto full on the lips. Ianto steps back, carefully unaffected, and informs Jack that kissing is not an approved method of communication at Torchwood Three, and that if he would like to express his gratitude, a nice bag of coffee beans would suffice. 


	3. Jack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a nod to a TV show and a nod to a book in this chapter. Props to anyone who gets them!

Jack hadn’t even heard of Torchwood Three until last October, when Tom’s fiancée had gone to temp for them for a few months. From there, Jack had asked around and learned that Torchwood Three was some sort of ragtag operation in Cardiff, apparently known for being a bunch of “poncy-arsed gits running around trying to make friends with aliens”.

Having seen the leader of Torchwood Three shoot a Weevil in the head without so much as blinking, Jack is now fairly certain that Torchwood One had been exaggerating.

Also, they have an _underground base_.

“This is Suzie Costello, our engineer,” Ianto says, indicating the young woman leaning back in her chair, booted-feet propped on her desk, sticky bun in one hand. “Feet off the table, if you would, please.”

Suzie shoots him a vaguely disgruntled look, but complies.

“And Toshiko Sato, our technology expert,” Ianto says, now indicated the pretty young Asian woman sitting at a station with, fittingly, multiple computers.

“Charmed to meet you both,” Jack says, just as another young man emerges from above with a mug in hand.

“Fuckin’ hell,” says the man. “You didn’t tell us you hired a Yank, Ianto.”

“Owen Harper,” Ianto sighs, indicating the man with the vague wave of his hand. His sleeve goes up, and for the first time Jack catches sight of a thick leather wrist band. He wonders what it is for a brief second, then files it away for later rumination.

“Public relations?” Jack asks.

“S’ _doctor_ Owen Harper, thanks very much,” Owen grouses, giving Ianto a dirty look. “I stitch up your sorry arses every week, I’ll take some due respect.”

Ianto waves him off and takes Jack on a tour of the Hub.

Torchwood Three is small, free of politics and hierarchy, and clearly held together with chewing gum and twine.

Jack thinks it will be perfect.

 

 

He, Owen, and Ianto go out on a Weevil alert almost as soon as the tour is finished.

“They normally live in the sewers and keep to themselves,” Ianto explains as he drives the SUV down the streets of Cardiff with a recklessness that Jack can totally get behind, but hadn’t expected out of Ianto. “Occasionally, some of them go rogue and come topside. Those are the ones that we kill. Lately, they’ve been surfacing more, but we don’t know why.”

Jack frowns. “Why not take them all out in the sewers, before they can hurt anyone?”

Owen turns to stare at him incredulously.

“What?” Jack asks, confused. “It can’t be that complicated of an operation—you’ve got them contained in the sewers. Put up a story to keep the public out of the sewers for a week, use a heavy gas, throw in some air-neutralizing tablets a few days later, and incinerate like crazy.”

“Torchwood Three does things differently than One,” Ianto says, after a pause. “There must be thousands of Weevils in the sewers. Only a few per week come topside—that’s two to three percent of the population per year. We won’t kill an entire race because of a few oddballs.”

Poncy-arsed gits, indeed.

Jack wants to ask how many people are brutally killed by Weevils each year, how Ianto can justify the murder of humans for a species of alien that shouldn’t even be on Earth, how the Weevils, who appear barely sentient, can outrank precious human life.

Instead, he settles back in his seat and says, “Guess that Weevil-alert system’s pretty important then, huh?”

He doesn’t miss the glance that Ianto and Owen exchange, and mentally kicks himself.

 

 

Ianto kills the Weevil with three shots to the chest, just as it starts to charge them, and it’s dead before it hits the ground.

When they return to the Hub, Jack expects Ianto to send the Weevil down to the incinerator, but he’s surprised when Ianto orders an autopsy on the Weevil.

“We’re trying to find something in common with the ones who come topside,” Owen explains as he and Jack carry the Weevil down to the autopsy bay. “We try not to shoot ‘em in the head when we can.”

“Don’t you need them alive?” Jack asks. “For brain activity and…stuff?”

“Nope,” Owen says. They approach the table, raising the dead Weevil a little higher. “Got a scanner that gives a complete record of brain activity, s’long as the brain’s intact. Gift from Torchwood One, actually.”

“Torchwood One gave you gifts?” Jack asks, surprised.

“Ianto’s good at acting like a smarmy git, when he needs to,” Owen replies. “I mean, he’s a right git the rest of the time anyway, s’not that much of a stretch.”

They haul the Weevil onto the table with a thump, and then Owen kicks Jack out of the autopsy bay.

 

 

Jack’s pouring himself another cup of coffee (the sign taped to the coffee maker reads ‘Mrs. Ianto Jones’, so Jack assumes that the brilliant coffee that seems to magically appear twice a day is courtesy of Ianto), when Suzie approaches with her empty mug in hand.

She’s opening her mouth, clearly about to say something, when Ianto’s voice suddenly calls out from his office.

“Owen,” he says calmly, stepping out from his office. He’s holding a piece of paper in his hand. “If you want to try to backdate your paperwork, you must be sure to backdate both sides of it. And also place it in the pile chronologically, not with the rest of last night’s paperwork.”

“Buggering fuck,” Owen mutters.

“Ten on the bar by tomorrow at noon,” Ianto says pointedly, and then disappears back into his office.

“Pull-ups,” Suzie clarifies, at Jack’s confused look. “Standard punishment. Ianto’s a real stickler about timely paperwork.”

“So _that’s_ what the bar in his doorway’s for,” Jack says, staring at the silver bar with renewed interest. “Huh. I like a guy who believes in physical punishment. What do you have to do to get a spanking?”

Suzie snorts and waves Jack out of the way, settling herself in front of the coffee maker. “He’s not going to let you fuck him, you know.”

“I’m really not picky about which end I’m on,” Jack replies.

“No, really,” Suzie says, turning as she pours. “The man doesn’t have sex.”

Jack frowns. “No.”

“Ever,” Suzie says, quite serious. “Owen used to call him The Robot—until Ianto overheard and got so mad he nearly fired him, that is, so don’t start using it yourself.”

Jack hadn’t been planning to. It seems out of character for Ianto to lose his temper over a bit of teasing, and he wonders if there are darker reasons at work.

Of course there are. Ianto’s records might put him at twenty-nine, but there’s no way he’s a day over twenty-six, and you don’t get to be the head of a branch of Torchwood at that age without something to back it up.

“But in all honesty, I’ve been here three years, and I haven’t seen him do anything beyond strategic flirting,” Suzie tells him. “The man lives and breathes the Rift. We think he even sleeps here.”

“He’s got to have had sex in the last three years,” Jack says, shaking his head. “No way does a man dress that well without the intention of having sex.”

Suzie shrugs. “Your funeral.”

Jack grins, eyes going to where Owen is sulkily doing pull-ups in the doorway to Ianto’s office. Jack wants Ianto. He wants to strip Ianto’s suit off with only his teeth while Ianto’s hands are tied above his head with his own tie. He wants to pound Ianto into the mattress, feel him jerk and shudder around him.

He wants to know Ianto’s secrets, pick them apart like layers of a pastry, and feel each and every one melt in his mouth.

 

 

Jack waits exactly two weeks before he puts his plan into action.

“Jack!” Ianto calls out from his doorway, paper in one hand. “Your report on the Hoix, a day late. Five on the bar by tomorrow at noon.”

Jack salutes snappily, and then returns to examining the photographs of the half-eaten pets they’d been finding these last few days. He tries and fails not to grin.

His field requisitions, due today according to the memo Ianto had sent around on Monday, aren’t even started.

 

 

He shows up in Ianto’s office the following morning before anyone else has even arrived.

“Damn, that smells good,” Jack says by way of greeting, nodding at the mug of coffee in Ianto’s hand.

Ianto looks up from whatever paperwork he’s working on. “My special blend.”

“Any left in the pot?” Jack asks hopefully.

“Sorry, only enough for one,” Ianto replies, with only the barest hint of smugness.

Ianto would have his own, private coffee supply.

Jack figures that he’ll be getting his own cup by next Tuesday, at the latest.

Setting down his pen, Ianto sits back in his chair and looks at Jack expectantly. Jack obliges and begins to take off his button-down shirt.

_Slowly_.

He sneaks a look at Ianto, who is as impassive as ever. For a moment, Jack considers providing some kind of nnn-tiss strip-beat and gyrating in time, but he decides that Ianto might actually dump the coffee over his head. No sense in wasting good coffee.

Once he’s clad in only his too-small undershirt, Jack places his hands on the bar and looks over to Ianto with a grin on his face.

“You need to do at least two in a row,” Ianto tells him, apparently unperturbed by Jack’s now less-dressed body. “Feet may not touch the ground, chin must be above the bar.”

“I normally do chin-ups,” Jack says as he pulls himself up for his first pull-up.

“You would.”

Jack frowns, chin over the bar. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Chin-ups work your biceps,” Ianto explains.

“They are quite nice, aren’t they?” Jack agrees happily, and does his second pull-up in one smooth movement to emphasize his point.

“Pull-ups target your back muscles, building actual torso strength and improving your balance and agility,” Ianto goes on. “Nice biceps aren’t good for much but looking fit with your shirt off.”

“Hey!” Jack protests, actually feeling a bit hurt at Ianto’s insinuation. “I do other exercises!”

“I suppose you bench-press as well?” Ianto asks, eyebrows raised.

“What’s wrong with bench-pressing?” Jack demands, furiously lifting himself up into his third pull-up. And how did Ianto _know?_

It must be his thick, impressively-toned chest.

Ianto looks amused. “Absolutely nothing, Jack. In fact, the rest of the team could learn something from you and your physical fitness routines.”

Jack attempts to figure out what could _possibly_ be wrong with bench-pressing as an exercise, stewing furiously as he does his fourth pull-up. And then his fifth. And then he goes to do his sixth, when Ianto’s voice interrupts him.

“That’s five,” Ianto says, and Jack registers the sound of the alarm going off, indicating that someone else has come in to work. “Very good. Thank you. And since you came in early—Cardiff police have five new dead animals for us to look at, said we could drop by as soon as they opened. You can pick up some pastries while you’re out.”

Jack tries not to make a face.

He likes the Cardiff PD well enough; they’re easy to manipulate, and a good number of them have already gotten themselves off thinking of his body (there’s a look people get—Jack’s seen it often enough that he can spot it at a hundred paces). But it’s definitely _not_ what he had in mind for this morning.

But, Ianto is the boss.

Jack squares his shoulders and turns, heading for the SUV.

“Jack.”

Jack turns around, hoping that the next words out of Ianto’s mouth are, “Don’t be stupid, get your arse back in here and fuck me across the desk, you sexy, sexy man.”

“Put your shirt back on, please,” Ianto says, indicating the puddle of Jack’s shirt lying on the ground.

 

 

Jack’s field requisitions are two days late.

Ianto is suspicious.

“I never was the best with paperwork,” Jack says, faux-apologetically, as he does his third pull-up. “I was always late, at Torchwood One, but I had a boss who was even more disorganized than I was, so he normally just wrote it off as his own error.”

 “I need paperwork to be on time for a reason, Jack,” Ianto replies. “I don’t just enjoy doling out physical punishments.”

“That’s a filthy, filthy lie, if I’ve ever heard one,” Jack says, grinning salaciously.

“Why are you here, Jack?” Ianto asks.

Jack raises an eyebrow, completing his fifth pull-up. “Because I was naughty. Naughty boys get punished.”

“I mean here, at Torchwood Three,” Ianto says. His gaze is penetrating. “Why come here, after everything that happened at Canary Wharf?”

Jack flashes him a grin. “Guess I’m just that kind of masochist.”

“You’re lying to me,” Ianto says calmly.

Jack feels a surge of irritation, but tamps down on it as he comes up on his seventh pull-up. He does his eighth, ninth and tenth pull-up in silence, and then drops to the ground, only slightly out of breath.

“Torchwood changes you,” he says, approaching Ianto’s desk. “It gets into your clothes, your hair, your skin, your dreams—until one day you wake up and you realize that Torchwood owns you completely, and you don’t even care. I’m here, Ianto Jones, because I couldn’t do anything else with my life.”

Ianto gazes at him for a moment, face as impassive as ever, and then says quite mildly, “You’re still lying, Jack. But you can go ahead and get started on the CCTV footage we got last night, of the creature. Tosh should be in within the next twenty minutes, and she can help you if you get stuck.”

Jack gathers his shirt from the floor and leaves Ianto’s office, an uneasy feeling rattling around in his gut.

 

 

Three days later, and Jack stands in Ianto’s office and strips off his button-down shirt, and then starts to go for his undershirt.

“Jack,” Ianto says from his desk, as Jack has his undershirt half-off. “Why are you taking your shirt off?”

Jack pauses and looks over to him. “I’ve got fifteen today. Might get a bit sweaty.”

Ianto sighs. “Jack… What are you doing?”

Jack’s mouth opens, but Ianto forestalls him with a hand.

“Here. In my office. For the third day in a week. Are you hoping to seduce me?”

“Guilty,” Jack says, offering Ianto a bright grin. “This has been a signature Captain Jack Harkness seduction. I knew you’d see right through it—”

“Will you give the flattery a rest, already?” Ianto snaps.

Startled by Ianto’s suddenly sharp tone, Jack stops. He wasn’t—okay, so he was, but it wasn’t like he didn’t _mean_ it.

Ianto sighs and sits back in his chair. “Jack, I’m giving you a new punishment, since you’re enjoying your current one entirely too much. Late paperwork from you will now mean that you’ll be on the cleaning rota for the day.”

“Because I’m enjoying it too much, or because _you’re_ enjoying it too much?” Jack asks, offering his absolutely best leer.

“I won’t date you, Jack,” Ianto says.

Jack frowns. “Well, I can settle for just sex. Really, I’m not normally a dating kind of guy, but I figured you were, so—”

“I’m not going to have sex with you, either,” Ianto says tiredly. “Sorry, Jack. Seduce elsewhere.”

“Why not?” Jack asks, genuinely curious.

Sometimes people say no to Jack Harkness. Then he finds out why they said no (not gay, not straight, already in a relationship), and fixes the problem. Then they usually say yes.

“Because I don’t date people who will settle for just sex,” Ianto replies.

Jack back-peddles.

“Well, actually, when I said that I’d settle for sex—”

“I said no, Jack,” Ianto says, quite firmly. “I know that your usually reaction to rejection is to bounce back with even more enthusiasm, but I’m quite serious when I say that I’m not interested. Please respect that.”

Jack stares at Ianto for a long moment, warring with himself, until finally he concedes.

“I’ll back off,” he finally says, taking a step back from Ianto’s desk and inclining his head. “Sorry.”

Jack has to turn around to get his shirt, and then trips over the grating. His cheeks burn with fury or embarrassment, he can’t tell which, and his hands won’t stop shaking until he’s down at the shooting range with a gun in his hands and the earmuffs over his ears. 


	4. Ianto

Ianto Jones is a filthy, rotten liar.

When he’d told Jack Harkness that he wouldn’t date him because he’d thought Jack incapable of forming real relationships, he’d been lying through his teeth. The only sex Ianto Jones has had in a very long time has been from one night stands. He has no problem with sex-only relationships.

The trouble is that however shallow and irritating and arrogant Jack Harkness might be, Ianto sees something in him. A spark. A possibility. Something small and flickering that lurks in Jack, and tells Ianto of the incredible, strong, brave man that Jack has the potential to be—a man that Ianto could fall in love with.

That is what is unacceptable about Jack.

So Ianto lies to him, easily, and is relieved when Jack actually does back off.

He also feels incredibly validated when, a week later, Jack starts sleeping with Suzie.

  


  


An alien lands out in the Welsh countryside—a thin, fuzzy brown thing that speaks in sighs, and calls himself Pip. His ship has broken down, and all he wants to do is get back to his galaxy in time to help his family with their harvest. He also has at least one particle gun, and some interesting equipment that appears to be medical technology.

“What would you do with him?” Ianto asks Jack.

Jack pauses, and it’s evident that he wasn’t expecting to be asked this question.

“Um,” says Jack. “Well, Torchwood One would have killed him and harvested his technology, but that’s not the right answer, is it?”

“No,” Ianto confirms, somewhat dryly.

“Okay. But it can’t be safe to try to hook him up with transportation; he knows the Earth is next to defenseless and if word gets out in other galaxies—”

“You’d lock him up in the cells, then?” Ianto interrupts, eyebrows raising.

Jack frowns. “What else are we going to do with him? He can’t go live with people—he’s brown and fuzzy, and can’t speak right.”

“And then we’d use his technology as our own?” Ianto asks.

“It’s… not like we could let him use it. So, yes?” Jack asks cautiously. “I mean, he’s got particle guns. He could kill off half of Cardiff.”

Ianto studies him for a moment, wondering if Jack knows how skewed Torchwood One’s views had been. Jack’s history with the Rift and Torchwood One’s attitude toward aliens must have gotten along like a house on fire, and it makes sense that Jack would be a bit human-centric about things.

But still. Jack is wrong, and Ianto is going to correct him.

“If we lock him up in the cells and take his technology as our own, I believe it actually would be kinder to just kill him,” Ianto tells Jack.

“We could let him out occasionally?” Jack suggests hesitantly. “I mean, once we know he’s not going to murder us all or try to take over Earth. And he could help us out in the Hub?”

Ianto holds in a sigh.

“We’re going to fix his ship and send him on his way,” Ianto explains calmly, not reacting to Jack’s incredulous look. “It’s not our place to ruin his life, and the lives of his family and friends, just because his ship broke down. Moreover, I doubt we need to worry about him spreading word of Earth’s current lack of alien defenses.”

“But—” Jack says, and then visibly stops himself. “But… particle guns.”

Ianto offers him a smile. “We’ll also strongly imply that a gift for our kindness would be appreciated. Don’t worry. We’ll get at least two particle guns, and possibly another Bekaran scanner, out of this whole thing.”

Jack still clearly does not believe that Pip won’t go bringing about the invasion of the Earth, even when Ianto goes on to fix Pip’s ship in exchange for three particle guns, some medical supplies, and an alien radio that picks up stations from Pip’s home planet. Ianto supposes that it will take time for Jack to understand.

  


  


They discover that the source of the brutal pet-killings is actually a displaced pteranodon. Ianto falls in love.

Owen bitches, Suzie mutters, and Tosh wrinkles her nose when she thinks Ianto isn’t looking. But Jack—

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Ianto says, when he catches Jack staring at the pteranodon with something like awe shining in his eyes.

Jack visibly starts, but quickly recovers. “If you go for scales, sure. I think the chafing would be a turn-off for me, though.”

“I’m thinking of naming her Myfanwy.”

“We’re really keeping it?” Jack asks. Beneath the incredulity, there’s a note of excitement.

“She seems quite keen on the chocolate we gave her,” Ianto replies. “I don’t think we could get rid of her.”

Jack hesitates, his Torchwood One training apparently rearing its head.

“If it ever gets loose—”

“Jack,” Ianto interrupts, though he’s fairly certain that it’s the hand he lays on Jack’s shoulder that actually gets him to shut up. “It is so very, very rare that the Rift brings us a gift like this. Even if she gets loose, we’ve got her tagged, and the worst that will happen is the death of a few cats and a handful of people needing to be retconned. Enjoy this.”

Ianto can virtually see the battle playing out on Jack’s face. Abruptly, Ianto wants to laugh at him, cuff him on the head, and sweep him into a hug all at once, and it’s only because he stops himself to take a deep, reasserting breath that he’s able to restrain himself.

He settles for squeezing Jack’s shoulder gently, and then he leaves Jack to his thoughts.

  


  


Ianto has never met anyone who loves going out on Weevil calls like Jack does. He seems to like nothing more than the opportunity to unquestioningly kill aliens, an unholy glee lighting his eyes whenever a Weevil alert comes in. Ianto figures that it’s a good release for Jack, after exercising so much restraint the rest of the time, and lets him have his fun. Plus, it’s made Suzie one happy camper, begging off of Weevil alerts in favor of her own personal projects.

In fact, she’s been begging off a little too much.

  


  


“Want me to do some more pull-ups for you?” Jack asks as he enters Ianto’s office.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Ianto replies from behind his desk. “If you’ll have a seat—keeping your shirt on, if you please.”

Jack gives him a ‘your loss’ sort of shrug and takes a seat. “What’s up?”

“Suzie,” Ianto says.

Jack frowns. “What about her?”

“I’ve noticed her becoming more withdrawn lately,” Ianto tells him. “I wanted to know if you’d noticed anything, or had any ideas as to what was going on.”

Slowly, Jack shakes his head. “Nope. Have you tried asking her?”

“I’ve tried, but she’s been fairly evasive,” Ianto says. “You haven’t noticed anything at all?”

“Not really, no,” Jack says, shrugging. “She’s pretty private—I can’t imagine that Tosh and Owen were able to tell you much, either.”

“Well, Tosh and Owen aren’t sleeping with her, are they?” Ianto points out.

Jack freezes.

“I have no problem with you two having sex—I wouldn’t have ever brought it up, if I wasn’t concerned for her. You haven’t noticed anything off, in your time together?” Ianto asks.

“No,” Jack answers, still recovering from the apparent surprise that Ianto knows what he and Suzie have been getting up to. “But I—what Suzie and I are doing—it’s—it’s just sex.”

Ianto raises his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I still want _you_ ,” Jack says with sudden earnestness, meeting Ianto’s eyes.

Ianto swallows, and only with effort does not look away. “Jack, I’ve asked you—”

“I want you,” Jack repeats, seriously. He leans in, eyes blazing with an abrupt intensity. “You’re—fascinating. Reserved, but so passionate, and funny, and clever, and so fucking hot it drives me _crazy_ —”

“Jack, I’ve told you already, the flattery isn’t necessary,” Ianto says sharply.

“Oh, believe you me, this isn’t flattery,” Jack all but growls, and then suddenly he’s _there¸_ right in Ianto’s face, hands braced on the desk. “This is what goes through my mind every time I look at you, every time I hear your voice, every time I catch a whiff of that cologne you wear, and I can’t—make it—stop.”

“I don’t wear cologne,” Ianto breathes, stupidly. It’s the only thing he can think to say.

A dangerous grin quirks the corners of Jack’s mouth, nose inches away from Ianto’s. “No one smells that good without cologne.”

“I suppose I’m—mmph!”

Ianto’s sentence is lost as Jack surges forward and captures his mouth in a kiss. And Ianto, head spinning, pulse racing, helplessly hard and starved of affection for an eternity—he kisses him back.

Jack is demanding and rough, forcing Ianto’s mouth to the angle that he wants with a few clicks of his teeth and a hand on the back of Ianto’s head. Somewhere, Ianto hears the sound of papers crunching, but even as the rational part of his brain thinks _Jack just crawled across my desk_ , he’s too busy drowning in the need to touch, to love, to pretend that he’s a human being again, and he doesn’t care. Fuck paperwork. Fuck his desk.

He wants _Jack_. Restless, cocky, warm, solid, Jack.

Jack.

Jack, who is his subordinate.

Jack, who is sleeping with Suzie.

Jack, who doesn’t know about Gray.

With immense self-control, Ianto is able to pull himself free of the kiss, panting, holding Jack at bay with his hands on Jack’s face.

“No,” he gasps. “No, Jack, I can’t.”

“ _Yes you can_.”

“No, I can’t,” Ianto says again, and this time he pushes his chair back. “I’m sorry. You need to leave.”

Jack scrambles off the desk, making a move toward Ianto’s crotch, but Ianto stands and stumbles back, and winds up standing over Jack, who is looking up at him with an expression of utter frustration.

“No,” Ianto says, dizzy, still stumbling, and all he can think is _I fucked up, get out, I fucked up, get out_. “No, no, no, I can’t.”

“Ianto—”

“No!” Ianto snaps, and finally staggers out of his office, leaving Jack alone as he disappears down to the secure archives—only Ianto has the codes, only he can get in, no one else will follow—and he waits there until his hard-on has disappeared and he’s breathing normally again.

  


  


The following morning, Ianto is making coffee when Jack appears out of nowhere, apparently having forgotten, overnight, the concept of ‘respecting personal space’.

“So—”

“Jack, I apologize for last night,” Ianto says in a rush, taking a step back and almost tripping over his own feet. “I shouldn’t have—allowed that to happen. It was inappropriate.”

“Oh, I’m all about inappropriate,” Jack says with a lascivious grin.

Ianto sighs and closes his eyes. “Jack.”

“You kissed me back,” Jack says in a low voice, leaning in so that Ianto can feel his breath on his neck. “I felt it. You wanted that kiss just as much as I did.”

Ianto swallows.

“I’m on to you, Ianto Jones.”

  


  


Gwen Cooper tails them through a test run with the Glove, to the hospital for a Weevil alert, back to the water tower, and spends several hours wandering around the plass before she disappears, and then returns to enter the fake tourist office with two pizza boxes.

“Retcon her,” Ianto orders, turning away from the footage Tosh has pulled up.

“Really?” Jack asks, frowning at Gwen Cooper’s black-and-white image as it pokes around the rack of pamphlets. “We ought to hire her on looks alone. Girl is _smokin’_.”

Ianto blinks. He looks at Jack, who is staring at screen-Gwen speculatively, a calculating look in his eye, and then to Gwen, who is now investigating the desk for clues. He blinks again.

He reconsiders.

  


  


Suzie kills herself.

Tosh, Owen and Jack all place their stolen alien tech onto Ianto’s desk, still looking shell-shocked at the news of Suzie’s betrayal.

“Thank you,” Ianto tells his team, his voice quiet. “I know that this is a lot to process, and I want you to know that you’re all welcome to take the day off. Owen, I’ve taken care of Suzie’s body already, you don’t need to worry about it. I’ll also take care of Suzie’s desk and apartment, once I’ve finished with the paperwork. Also, I hope you all know that my office is always open, if you need to talk.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re just who I’d talk to,” Owen snipes, shoving his hands in his jacket and giving Ianto a baleful look. “You’re clearly real broken up about this, after all. You don’t even have emotions, you—”

Jack grabs Owen by the collar and slams him up against the wall. “Shut up. You don’t know the _first thing_ about Ianto.”

“Neither do you,” Owen shoots back viciously. “He won’t even shag you, will he? Good instincts, considering you didn’t even notice that you were shagging a murderer!”

“Owen,” Ianto says, moving around his desk, even as he knows that he doesn’t stand a chance of breaking Jack’s hold.

“Shut up,” Jack hisses.

“Owen, Jack, stop—”

“Why didn’t you notice?” Owen demands, his face screwing up. “Why did you _notice_ , all those times when you were _fucking_ her, when you had your fingers on her skin and your mouth in her pussy, why didn’t you fucking _notice_ —”

“Shut up, shut the _fuck_ up—”

Ianto fires his gun.

There’s a shriek from Tosh and the entire team jumps, heads snapping to look at Ianto with identical startled expressions. It is, blessedly, silent, and everyone is finally paying attention.  

Ianto stares at Jack and Owen, not even bothering to look at the pale, tear-streaked Tosh in the corner.

“Jack,” he says, voice very carefully controlled, “put Owen down and get a hold of yourself. Owen, don’t even open your mouth.”

With a thud, Jack drops Owen to the ground and takes a step back, giving Owen a disgusted look.

Owen flips him off.

“None of you are to blame for what happened to Suzie,” Ianto says forcefully. “ _None_ of you. Is that clear?”

No one nods.

Ianto exhales carefully. “Go home. Go to the pub. Go to your desks. Go… process.”

Owen mutters something unintelligible and stomps out, followed closely by Tosh, leaving only Jack in Ianto’s office.

“You know that it’s not your fault, either, right?” Jack asks.

Ianto gives Jack a thin smile. “Jack, I’m the boss. Being the one at fault is in my job description.”

“Yeah, well, you were just her boss,” Jack says with a bitter smile. “It’s not like you were the one having sex with her.”

“It’s not your fault, Jack,” Ianto says steadily.

“It’s not yours, either.”

They stare at each other for a long, silent moment, and Ianto can feel the weight of tonight’s events bearing down on him like he’s being pressed to death.

Finally, Ianto breaks the stare and changes the subject. “I’m hiring Gwen Cooper to replace Suzie. I thought you might like to be the one to give her the tour when she comes in on Monday. What do you say?”

“Uh. Sure,” says Jack.

Ianto nods without looking at him.  

Jack leaves Ianto alone in his office, still staring at the grain of wood on his desk. 


	5. Jack

Gwen’s first time out with the Weevils, there’s just the one, and Jack shoots it three times in the chest before it finally falls dead.

(“If you kill any today, I’d appreciate it if you tried to restrain your glee at adding another notch to your Weevil bedpost,” Ianto had quietly requested of Jack, as they loaded up the SUV with fresh medical supplies courtesy of Owen. “It’s Gwen’s first time out. No need to make her think we’re a bunch of psychopaths.”

And Jack had opened his mouth to ask if Ianto wasn’t sure that they weren’t, and then the memory of Suzie had flared in his mind, hot and searing, and he’d shut his mouth.

“I find it disturbing that you’re comparing my Weevil killings to my bed partners,” Jack had said instead.

“The numbers must be nearly equal,” Ianto had replied.

Jack had mimed being shot through the heart, complete with staggering and a theatrical gasp.

Ianto had laughed, and Jack had wished that he could bottle that moment, even as he staggered back against the SUV and began making gagging noises, and then took up a death rattle as he slid to the ground.)

Even with Jack’s impressive restraint on his vindictive pleasure at having killed another one of the ugly fuckers before it could hurt anyone, Gwen still stares at him, aghast.

“You—you just killed it,” she says.

“That’s what we do with Weevils who come topside, Gwen,” Ianto cuts in, before Jack can say anything. Probably for the best. Jack doesn’t have anything quite so considerate to say to her right now. “We kill them before they can hurt any of us. There’s nothing else that we can do for them. I told you about this.”

“Nothing?” Gwen asks, wide-eyed. “We can’t, I dunno, put them back in the sewers? Maybe put them in those cells you’ve got in the Hub?”

Jack rolls his eyes and sets about hauling the body of the dead Weevil, as Ianto explains about the limited space they have in the cells and Owen’s research into the minds of rogue Weevils. He doesn’t think that this bleeding-heart business will last for more than a week, not if Gwen wants to continue working for Torchwood.

 

 

Gwen accidentally releases an alien sex gas in her second week. There are people dead.

“He’s got a right to see his daughter, to know what’s happening to her!” Gwen protests to Ianto over lunch.

Jack snorts before he can help himself.

“You shut up, Jack,” Gwen snaps, stabbing her chopsticks in his general direction. “We all know you don’t give a rat’s arse about killin’ things—none of you do. You’re so wrapped up in your aliens, down in this base of yours, that you’ve forgotten that there are people up there!”

“We’ve forgotten?” Jack asks incredulously. “No, I think _you’ve_ forgotten that the alien possessing that girl down there has _killed people_. She’s a threat.”

“She’s a person,” Gwen counters.

“She’s a person with an alien inside of her, and if it’s alien, it’s—”

“Thank you, Jack,” Ianto interrupts. “Gwen, I’m sorry, but the girl’s father is not coming into the Hub. We don’t bring outsiders into the Hub, ever. It’s too risky.”

“But she’s dying down there,” Gwen protests. “We’ve got to give her a reason to keep fighting.”

“Go down and lie to her, then,” Ianto suggests. “Tell her that we’re bringing her father down to see her in two days, and she needs to hold on that long.”

“And when two days pass, and her father isn’t there?” Gwen asks.

“Time passes strangely, when you’re locked in a cell and injured,” Ianto replies—and for a moment, there’s a odd look that passes over his face. “In her state, we could probably keep her going for about a week or so, believing only two days had passed.”

Gwen puts down her chopsticks, looking pale. Even Tosh looks a little discomfited.

“This is wrong,” Gwen whispers. “This is—this is wrong. It’s sick.”

“It’s the most practical solution to your problem,” Ianto replies mildly.

“Besides,” Owen puts in, “at the rate her body’s destructing, we’re only looking at a timeframe of about twenty-four hours, max.”  

“I need to—do something. I can’t just sit here,” Gwen mutters, and she pushes back her chair and stands, walking away from the table swiftly.

After a beat, Ianto sighs and takes the napkin out of his collar, wipes at his face one last time, and goes after her.

 

 

Jack doesn’t know what Ianto says to Gwen, but following their little off-screen powwow, Gwen seems to be more okay with the current situation. Jack wonders if Ianto regrets hiring her. He wonders if Ianto is considering retconning her, if she doesn’t shape up by the end of this case.

He kind of hopes so.

 

 

Carys escapes.

Jack, Tosh and Gwen go pounding up flights of concrete steps, way behind her and Ianto, and come stumbling out into the tourist office to see Ianto holding Carys at gunpoint, and Carys clutching a hand in a blue jar.

“I’m opening the door,” Ianto is saying, edging toward the door. “I’m opening it, there’s a button, it’s just here—”

The door out of the tourist office swings open.

“Now give me the—”

Carys heaves the jar in the complete opposite direction. Ianto yells a protest. Carys doesn’t even register and is bolting for the door, but doesn’t get three steps there when the sound of Ianto’s gun echoes off the walls and she falls to the ground with a scream.

“You shot her!” Gwen says disbelievingly, as Jack shoves past her to check on Carys.

There’s no puddle of blood beneath her shoulder.

“Bullet didn’t go through,” Jack calls to Ianto, who is crouched behind the tourist desk and cradling the severed hand with something like reverence. He doesn’t appear to give two shits about anything but that hand at the moment.

Jack looks to Tosh and Gwen instead.

“Where’s Owen?” he demands, placing his own hands over the bullet wound in Carys’ shoulder.

“He’s still getting dressed, I th—Jack!” Tosh cries, pointing at something directly behind Jack.

Jack twists around and sees something golden flash before his eyes, and he recoils but it’s too late—

Energy, heat, dust, light rush into his nostrils, his mouth, his eyes, his nose, the pores of his skin, and he coughs and chokes and feels his chest tighten like his skin’s too tight for his body and—

He gasps and—

Chokes and—

 _Pulses_.

 

 

Jack screams. Twists. Fights. Something in him wants control, but he won’t give it up, he won’t let it take him, he won’t kill—

“Ianto,” he gasps raggedly, as Ianto’s face appears in his line of sight. “Ianto, you’ve got to— _arg_ —lock me up, now—”

“I know,” Ianto says calmly. “I know. We’re going to lock you up, and we won’t let you hurt anyone.”

“Get it out,” Jack pleads, feeling agony twisting his bones and tearing his muscles. “Please, get it out.”

“Oh, God, can’t we sedate him?” Gwen’s voice asks.

“We might just risk it moving to another body,” Ianto replies. “We’ve got to get him down to the cells and locked up—Tosh, can you run and get those clamps we used on the Weevils last year? Owen, Gwen, help me get him down to the cells.”

They move in to pick Jack up.

“No—no—” He howls when they touch him, as their flesh touches his and alights his every nerve ending with a need, with a burning, white-hot need to _fuck_ and feel the rush of the _orgasm_ and the tremble of muscles, the rush of adrenaline, the gasping, the panting, the flood of complete pleasure that he feels his could drown in.

“Gwen—Gwen!” Ianto’s voice barks.

Jack feels lips slide against his, and there’s a warm body in front of him and—

_sexsexsexsexsex_

The body is yanked away and he grabs, crying in despair, but something yanks him back and he stumbles, cold and alone and needing.

Needing.

He needs sex. He needs to feel _sex_.

 

 

There is agony. There are rushes of exquisite pleasure and pain flooding his body and setting every nerve in his body alight. There is screaming, and writhing, and pleading with no one. This is something else moving his body.

There is no one.

 

 

“Kill me,” Jack chokes out, staring at Ianto through the glass wall. “Kill me, please, kill me.”

“No.”

“It’d be a mercy.”

“I won’t kill you, Jack,” Ianto says in a low voice. “We’re going to save you, and you’re going to get better. You won’t die—not here, not now, and not like this. Do you understand?”

All Jack knows is burning.

“Please,” he begs, feeling tears run down his cheeks. “Please, just make it stop.”

“Jack,” says Ianto, calm as ever. “Jack, if you died right here, you’d leave everything unfinished. You still have things to learn, things to find, people to… save. Don’t you?”

 _Gray_.

The word echoes in his mind like the breath of life, and the memory of losing Gray plays across his mind as if he’s really there, reliving it for a second time. Gray needs him. If he dies, then Gray will be lost forever.

He can’t lose Gray. Not now.

Not after everything he’s done to find him again.

“I do,” Jack confirms in a broken gasp. “I’m not—done. I can’t die yet. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—but it _hurts_. Ianto, please, it hurts too much.”

“I know it does,” Ianto says, and for the first time Jack hears the strain in Ianto’s voice—the strain of emotion. Hurt. Frustration. “I know. But you have to hang in there.”

“Make it stop,” Jack cries. “Make it stop, Ianto. Help me.”

“Jack—”

“Help me,” Jack pleads, now outright sobbing. “I—”

And he roars in pain as the alien burns him, electrocutes him, sends bolts of agony into every bone in his body, demanding control, and his eyes roll up into the back of his head, bordering on unconsciousness.

How he wishes.

How he _wishes_.

 

 

There’s a hand on his face, but Jack is too weak to react. He feels dead. His entire body feels as if it’s floating in a hazy twilight, the agony thumping in time with his heart, and he just doesn’t care.

“Jack,” Ianto’s voice says softly. “You’ve been so brave, Jack. I’m proud of you.”

The words float in and out of Jack’s mind, echoing and only occasionally conveying some meaning.

And then Jack feels the hand on his face slide back into his hair, and he feels soft lips on his own. Ianto is kissing him. Ianto is _kissing_ him.

Belatedly stunned, Jack musters up the very last of his energy to move his mouth, kissing Ianto back, pushing his head forward and locking their mouths firmly together, because it’s Ianto, who he thinks he might actually be a little bit in love with. But oddly, as they kiss, he begins to feel warm—like someone’s lit a fire a few feet away, like he’s slid into a heated bath—and oh _God_ does it feel good. It spreads into the depths of his chest, supporting his lungs and his muscles, vanishing the pain and loosening the knots in the very depths of his soul.

Ianto draws back.

The feels fades, but not before Jack catches sight of the fact that he and Ianto are glowing with golden light.

He frowns, suddenly feeling a lot more aware. “What—”

“Did you like that?” Ianto asks, looking directly at Jack but not speaking to him at all. “Did you like all that energy? It’s all right in here, inside of me, you just have to come and get it.”

Jack feels inside him that isn’t _him_ stir.

This is Ianto’s plan? To convince the alien to transfer itself to him?

“Ianto, no,” Jack says desperately, his voice hoarse. “You can’t—”

“He’s weak,” Ianto cuts in sharply. “He’s dying. I know you can feel it. Stay in him and you’ll die, too.”

It’s stirring, moving, withdrawing.

“Ianto, please, don’t—”

“Come to me,” Ianto breathes, taking a careful step backwards. “Come to me, before he dies and it’s too late. Come out of him and into me.”

“Iant—”

Jack’s cry is cut off as suddenly something rushes up the center of his chest, scraping over nerve endings along the way and burning, scratching, making him choke and gasp and gag and—

It’s gone.

The golden dust floats in the air in front of Jack’s face, and Jack is so overwhelmed with the feeling of being _free_ that for a moment he forgets that the dust alien now has its sights set on Ianto.

By the time he remembers, Jack doesn’t even have time to inhale before a vivid blue light springs up before his eyes, forming a bright blue cylinder around the golden dust and holding it.

“Is it—”

“Trapped,” Ianto confirms grimly, eyes fixed on the golden dust as it flies up against the blue cylinder but is rebounded. “Yes. We were hoping that this would do the trick. Now, it shouldn’t survive very long in our atmosphere…”

And sure enough, the golden dust is already beginning to pale and sink to the ground, dying before Jack’s eyes.

Jack can’t bring himself to feel any sympathy.

He and Ianto watch as the golden dust becomes nothing more than a pile of sand on the ground, not unlike the piles of sand that the alien had reduced its victims to after it had gotten its orgasm.

After a moment, Ianto bends over and turns the device off, and the blue cylinder disappears.

The sand remains still.

“It was Gwen’s idea,” Ianto says, “to draw it out and trap it in the atmosphere. And Tosh was the one who remembered this device.” He pockets the device and removes the key to the clamps Jack’s hands and legs are bound in, and sets about unlocking them. “We would have intervened sooner, but we had to wait until you were weak enough.”

Jack’s legs are free.

“And you can just say that?” Jack demands, his mind still reeling in shock. “You can just—say it, like that, you had to wait until I was almost dead before you could even try to save me? You—don’t you even care?”

Ianto swallows and releases the clamps on Jack’s arms. He doesn’t look Jack in the eye.

“Yes, Jack,” he says, in a voice that is suddenly as hoarse as Jack’s own. “Yes, I care. I don’t know what I’d have done, if this hadn’t worked.”

“If I’d died,” Jack says shakily.

Ianto’s eyes fall closed. “If you’d— _Jack_.”

His voice cracks on the last word, and suddenly, it hits home for Jack that he’d nearly died.

He’d almost _died_.

Died like everyone in the tower. Everyone. Eight hundred people, with dead eyes and congealing blood and stiff limbs that seemed to hold you down when you stumbled over the piles of dead bodies—

The trembling starts first. He can’t control it, can’t stop his hands or his legs or his teeth from rattling, and then he finds himself struggling to breathe as the room seems to shrink in on him and his lungs won’t work properly, and then all he knows is that his hands are clutching at Ianto’s suit and he needs to somehow fold himself up and place himself inside of Ianto’s chest. Ianto is safe. Ianto is strong. Ianto can protect him.

He registers that Ianto is holding him close, making soothing noises and running a hand through his hair, that they have somehow sunk to the ground, but all he cares about is _Ianto, Ianto, Ianto, Ianto_.

Ianto holds him tightly as he trembles, and Jack clings for all he’s worth.

 

 

In a daze, Jack allows Owen to check him over, obligingly downs some Torchwood Pepper-Up Potion (one of the medical supplies they’d gotten from Pip; Ianto had named it and Owen had groused about the stupid name for a week), and then watches Cardiff speed past him as Ianto drives him home.

Jack can’t get his shaking hands to hold the key long enough to get it in the lock. Ianto quietly takes the keys, and unlocks the door.

“I see your maid’s vacationing,” he says dryly, as he ushers Jack into his flat.

Jack barely registers the words. All he knows is trembling, and cold.

The next thing he knows is lying in his own bed, teeth chattering despite the fact that he can feel the weight of blankets on him, and Ianto’s solid body enveloping him, tucking him close.

_Safe._

“S-sorry,” Jack forces out eventually. “Sorry, I c-can’t—”

“It’s all right,” Ianto says. “You’re fine. You’re all right.”

“I-it wasn’t just that it h-hurt,” Jack goes on, stuttering badly as he struggles to breathe through his chattering teeth, but unable to stop himself from opening his mouth in the first place. “I-it was in my _b-b-body_. It c-controlled me and I couldn’t s-stop it.”

“I know,” Ianto tells him quietly. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you sooner.”

Jack lets out a sob-like noise, burrowing deeper into Ianto’s warmth and not replying.

“Shhh,” says Ianto gently, running his hand up and down Jack’s back soothingly. “Shh. You’re all right now.”

But all Jack feels is the desolate, permeating pain of the alien that had taken over his body. He feels alone. He feels cold.

“Make it g-go away,” Jack pants, and he grabs fistfuls of Ianto’s shirt that ground him, allow him to finally make his teeth stop chattering long enough to get a sentence out. “You care. You _care_ , don’t you?”

“Jack—”

“Please,” Jack breathes, nuzzling Ianto’s neck. “Please care. You can help me now, couldn’t help me then. _Please_.”

Ianto’s mouth opens, but before the imminent protest can escape Jack captures Ianto’s mouth with his own, silencing him with a desperate kiss. And Ianto kisses him back, mouth working against Jack’s as their mouths come open and Jack can begin to feel something inside him loosening, warming, tumbling free.

“Don’t say no,” Jack pleads, when they part for air. He draws back so that he can see Ianto’s eyes, dark in shadows of his bedroom, and Jack rests his forehead against Ianto’s. “I need this. I need _you_ , Ianto Jones.”

Ianto is gripping his shoulders tightly, breathing just as hard as Jack, and he shakes his head. “I can’t—”

“ _Don’t lie_.”

Ianto’s mouth opens, but no words escape.

“Yes,” Jack growls, rolling Ianto onto his back and nibbling a trail up Ianto’s neck and onto Ianto’s jaw. “Yes, yes, yes—”

And he stops, lips on the very corner of Ianto’s mouth, and he waits.

“ _Yes_ ,” Ianto breathes.

 

 

Ianto lets out quiet sighs and small moans beneath Jack, and as they move together, rubbing and kissing and licking, Jack feels the familiar comfort of sex sliding over him. He is Jack Harkness. Jack Harkness does this, he does it well, there’s little else in this world he does better.

(It’s all he’s good for.)

Their fingers fumble over the tube of lube until finally Jack’s hand closes around the tube. Ianto’s hands run down his abs and close around the base of Jack’s cock as Jack pushes a finger into his own entrance, reveling in the feeling of his muscles pulsing around his own flesh—

He catches his breath, looking down at the wide blue eyes that are staring at him. Jack is so used to seeing the weight of an age in Ianto’s eyes that now, seeing them so huge and riveted, Ianto looks startlingly young and it takes his breath away.

And then later, when Jack lowers himself down onto Ianto, Ianto’s lips part in a silent gasp, his chest jolting upward and his fingers clamping down on Jack’s hips, and Jack feels the rush of lust and heat. He feels _alive_. He feels _here_. And he feels so, incredibly fucking grateful that he’s getting to see Ianto feel it, too.

He comes doubled over, teeth gritted and his forehead pressed against Ianto’s chest, entire body pulsing with his orgasm. And just as Jack is starting to come back to himself, Ianto lets out a strangled cry, his fingers digging into Jack’s shoulders, hips bucking wildly, pushing deeper, harder into Jack, rubbing against his prostate in a way that rips a hoarse bellow through his teeth, and Jack nearly comes a second time.

And they pant. Alive. Here.

Together. 


	6. Ianto

Ianto wakes up around three in the morning. He and Jack are—rather unpleasantly—stuck together with dried semen and sweat, and Jack has fallen asleep on top of him. Of course. As if Jack Harkness would fall asleep in any other position than the one that most effectively trapped his lover into staying the night. Controlling bastard.

Ianto has, of course, spent nights trapped under sleeping lovers before. He’s completely prepared to lay there and mentally go through the paperwork that would be required for dealing with the sex-alien fiasco, but then the picture on Jack’s bedside table, right next to where he’d tossed his wrist strap before crawling into bed with Jack, catches his eye.

It’s two small boys at the seaside, probably ten and seven, both curly-haired, grinning, and baring their skinny little chests for the world to see. The older one can’t be anyone but Jack, which means that the younger one is—

Ianto tears his eyes away.

Takes a calming breath. Starts with a list of forms he’ll need to pull for himself.

Jack takes in a deep breath that mirrors the one Ianto just took, and sleepily nuzzles Ianto’s shoulder.

The picture is less than a foot from Ianto’s head.

He pulls himself together again, trying to focus on the list of forms, but—but—

 

 

Jack arrives at the Hub around six-thirty in the morning, looking like he’d rolled out of bed, thrown on whatever clothes were nearest, and then proceeded to break several speed limits in an attempt to get to the Hub as soon as possible.

“Hey!” Jack says, bouncing into Ianto’s office.

Ianto looks up from the stack of forms he’s been steadily working through, and hopes that there is not a facial counterpart to the feeling of his stomach dropping to his knees.

“Hello, Jack,” Ianto says calmly.

“Hey,” Jack says again. He glances around. “You, uh… Well I woke up, and you were—” He stops himself, and the restless energy suddenly begins to look a little forced. “I was, um, worried. You know. Thought there might have been an emergency at the Hub or something, but, ah… I see there’s not, so…”

Fuck.

“I wanted to get a head start on this paperwork,” Ianto says, because it springs to mind first.

“Oh,” says Jack, staring at said pile. “Yeah, paperwork. Important stuff.”

Ianto nods, offering a weak smile. “Very. Uh, important.”  

“Right,” Jack says, no longer looking Ianto in the eye. “Probably couldn’t wait, huh?”

“I just—” Ianto starts, but when Jack’s head jerks up and he sees the hopeful look on Jack’s face, he just… _can’t_.

“Yeah?” Jack asks.

“Wanted to… get a head start,” Ianto finishes lamely. “You know.”

“Oh,” says Jack, again. He looks away. “Yeah. I know.”

“You could get started on your report,” Ianto offers, then kicks himself when he sees Jack blanche at the idea of detailing what had undoubtedly some of the worst days of his life. “Or—you know, you take the day off. It’s been a rough few days for you, you should go home and deal with everything that’s happened.”

He grabs his pen and goes back to the form determinedly, waiting for Jack to leave, but Jack doesn’t.

“Do you know how I deal?” Jack asks.

“You have sex, Jack,” Ianto replies evenly.

“Yes,” Jack says, and Ianto looks up in mild surprise. “I have sex. I’m not ashamed of it. Sex grounds me. It forces me to live in the present, in my own body, and it forces me to connect with other human beings. I deal using sex. I want to know—how does Ianto Jones deal?”

Ianto is actually, momentarily, dumbfounded by the question.

“You shove it behind that mask of indifference,” Jack informs him, before Ianto can actually answer. “You don’t deal, do you? You just compartmentalize and suppress it until you can forget about it. That’s why you don’t seem to care—that’s why Owen called you The Robot.”

 _Robot_.

“This may have been new and traumatic for you, Jack,” Ianto says coldly, every muscle in his body suddenly tense, “but do not make the mistake of thinking that watching you dying in agony was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It’s not on my top ten list, or even my top fifty. I have been more than considerate of your inexperience—”

“My inexperience?” Jack interrupts incredulously. “My _inexperience?_ You—I can’t believe you, I can’t fucking—you absolute bastard, you _bastard_ , what the _hell_ right do you have—”

“My point is that you have no right to judge me when you don’t know the first thing about me,” Ianto interrupts, with forced calm.

“Oh, and who does?” Jack demands. “Because as far as I can tell, you’ve got no one. No friends. No family. Just your stupid, fucking team, and apparently we’re too _inexperienced_ for the likes of Ianto Jones.”

“Go home, Jack.”

“You’re alone,” Jack sneers. “You’re completely and totally alone. There’s not a single person in this whole goddamn universe that loves you, is there? How’s that feel?”

It feels like a blade of ice right into Ianto’s heart, because Jack is right.

“I am alone,” Ianto agrees quietly. “I’ve been alone for a very long time, and in all likelihood I will continue to be alone for a very long time. It’s the way I’m meant to be.”

“Don’t give that emo shit—”’

“Go home, Jack,” Ianto say again, but this time it’s heavy with resignation. “Go home and find someone else to love, because you’re wasting your time with somebody like me.”

“You’re pathetic,” Jack hisses. “I hope you know that. The only reason you’re alone is because you _want_ to be. You’re secretive and cold, and downright cruel anytime someone gets too close. You make it impossible to get to know you, and then you’re too cowardly to admit that it’s all your own doing. And I don’t have time for that kind of bullshit. So fuck you, Ianto. Fuck you.”

And with that, Jack Harkness marches out of the room, leaving Ianto trembling in his wake. Hot tears sting Ianto’s eyes, but whether they’re from fury or hurt, he doesn’t know.

Jack just—doesn’t understand. He doesn’t _know_.

 

 

“I’m not sure what they are,” Tosh says two days later, typing away at her keyboard. “I—I’ve never seen them before. The database isn’t getting anything from an image match, though with the quality of the footage that’s not surprising…”

“Just sort of sitting there,” Owen observes from behind Tosh. “Looks like they might be talking or something.”

Ianto finally makes his way over to Tosh’s computer terminal.

Jack sidesteps to the left, away from him, as Ianto comes to a stop.

Ianto refrains from rolling his eyes—but then he catches sight of the video footage on the screen, and all thoughts of eye-rolling fly from his mind. He nearly drops the mug of coffee in his hand.

“Ianto?” Tosh asks concernedly, twisting around in her seat. “Do you recognize it?”

“They’re known as the Tri’ir,” Ianto says, his voice forcibly calmly. “And we need kill them as soon as possible.”

There’s a moment of surprised silence.

Ianto straightens and sets his mug of coffee on the desk. “I want everyone armed from the armory, not just your usual gun. Owen, do you know where the sensory deprivation muffs are?”

Owen blinks. “Don’t tell me we’re going to go slaughter aliens in bloody _earmuffs_.”

“Shooting range earmuffs aren’t going to be enough,” Ianto replies. “Track them down, make sure everyone has a pair that won’t fall off. Keep your comm in your pocket, only use it if we separate. And when you put it on, be absolutely certain that you’re far away enough from the Tri’ir that you won’t hear any noises they make.”

“What happens if you hear them?” Gwen asked, looking slightly panicked.

“The sound waves resonate inside your brain and destabilize the cellular membranes of your neurons to the point where your entire brain becomes scrambled mush.”

Gwen goes pale.

“They destroy whole planets with about two dozen of them,” Ianto continues, making his way over to the armory to punch the access code. “Right now there’s only three, but we need to get there and kill them before they report back that Earth seems like a lovely place for their next conquest.”

He catches Gwen’s uncertain look out of the corner of his eye, but doesn’t bother with it. He finishes punching in the code and pushes down on the handle, then lets the door swing open.

“Buck up, Cooper,” Jack says with vicious glee as he walks past her into the armory. “This is what Torchwood’s all about—killing ugly motherfuckers who threaten planet Earth.”

"Well, I certainly don’t think you need to be so excited about it,” Gwen replies crossly, following him in.

“These are the best kind of calls,” Jack says, seizing a large blaster off the wall. “No mucking about with diplomacy, wondering if the aliens are secretly trying to kill us, talking, negotiating, threatening, blah blah bah… Give me a gun and an alien I can just shoot on sight, any day.”

Gwen glares at him and goes about following Tosh, who is examining the array of smaller blasters and compact particle guns they have.

Ianto sighs internally and goes to select his own weapons.

He’d hired Gwen because she’d shown good investigative skills and persistence, and he needed someone other than Tosh and himself with a half-decent work ethic, but mostly because Jack had thought she was attractive. Gwen was supposed to have been the distraction, something for Jack to play with so that he’d leave Ianto alone.

The plan has backfired spectacularly when, two weeks into Gwen’s employment, it’s turned out that Jack can’t stand her. Also, she was the one who released the alien gas, which had infected Jack, which led to him comforting Jack, which had led to the one thing Ianto had hired Gwen Cooper to avoid.

Ianto can’t tell if Jack is being extra vicious because he’s annoyed with Gwen (as he frequently is, whenever she starts to get compassionate about anything other than humans), or because he’s still smarting from his confrontation with Ianto two days ago (also a strong possibility, considering Jack still won’t look him in the eye), or a combination of both.

There’s a part of him that irrationally hopes that Jack and Gwen’s relationship will become one of those fire-ice relationships, where they one day discover that instead of hating each other they’re actually desperately in love. Gwen and Jack are both entirely too repulsed by each other for that to ever happen, but Ianto still hopes.

Anything to get Jack away from him.

 

 

Just as Ianto finishes off a Tri’ir with a rather nasty spilling of its innards out onto the pavement, he feels a tap on his shoulder. Looking up, he sees an earmuff-ed Owen, who immediately jerks his head to the side in a way to indicate that Ianto should look at—

Jack. Who is letting out an unheard battle cry, blasting into a dying Tri’ir with obvious relish. His entire face is alight with an unholy fervor, and the shots are largely unnecessary. The Tri’ir is barely twitching, at this point.

Owen raises his eyebrows pointedly.

 _He’s coping_ , Ianto mouths.

Owen shoots a doubtful look at Jack, and then twirls a finger by his ear and mouths, _He’s done his bloody nut._

Ianto shakes his head, watching as Jack fires one last round into the Tri’ir, and then pauses, looks at the dead body, and kicks it with his boot.

This is how Jack Harkness copes. It’s a fine tightrope to walk, but Ianto will let him walk it as far as he possible can, because the alternative is to push Jack off entirely, and he isn’t sure he wants to see to a Jack Harkness without the coping mechanisms that he’s been using since he was eleven. He doesn’t know if Jack would survive it.

 

 

Then, Gwen has to go and press buttons.

She and Jack still aren’t sleeping together. As much as Ianto appreciates her compassion for aliens, which is refreshing in the face of Jack’s hatred of anything not native to Earth, he’s beginning to rethink ‘curiosity’ as a trait to look for when hiring.

“ _Why_ would you push the button?” Ianto asks.

“I—I don’t know,” Gwen says, tearful, still off-balance from her ordeal. “It was just—it was like I _had_ to press it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t seem to do anything right, what with this, and my cock-up with the sex alien that nearly got Jack killed.”

Ianto sighs and writes it off as another ‘cock-up’, resulting from Gwen’s endless curiosity and naivety. He gives Gwen a lecture about alien technology and how she could have very well blown up the entirety of Wales with the press of a button, tells her to think before she acts next time, and then settles down with his team to work out who this mystery boy is.

When, shortly thereafter, _Owen_ (Owen who knows better, who was involved in the clean-up of Canary Wharf, who’d held a dying Amanda in his arms when her gun had jammed on a Weevil outing last year and told her that he did believe in heaven) presses the button, Ianto becomes more than suspicious.

“It was like I _had_ to press it,” Owen mutters, not looking at Ianto. “Just—dunno. I had to know.”

Ianto locks it, and its counterpart they find later, in the secure archives.

It doesn’t do any good, though, because in the end Owen tracks down Ed Morgan and nearly kills him. Ianto’s about two seconds away from shooting Owen to disable him when Gwen magically talks him down.

“You were going to shoot me, weren’t you?” Owen demands.

Ianto shrugs one shoulder.

“You’re as bad as Jack,” Owen says. “Bloody shoot one of your own—”

And then Gwen screams, and Ed Morgan’s impaled himself on the knife she’d just gotten from Owen. Ed Morgan quickly dies, leaving a stricken Gwen and a perversely satisfied Owen.

Ianto’s still reflecting on the fact that Gwen talked Owen down, whereas he was ready to shoot him. Owen. His own team member.

Perhaps, he thinks an hour later as he watches Gwen cry quietly into the mug of tea Ianto’s made her, Gwen is going to bring about a few changes to the team. Perhaps her compassion will do them some good.

 

 

Jack takes up a secret side-project. But his paperwork is timely, and Gwen spends hours of downtime leafing through magazines, Owen playing computer games and trolling self-help forums on the internet, and Tosh doing strange technical things Ianto doesn’t understand, but are probably the beginnings of her world domination. So Ianto allows it.

Jack studies Rift readings from twenty years ago. He pulls up Torchwood reports, police files and archived CCTV data. He uses the aging program they have on the computer, and runs image searches. He requests access to data from Torchwood Two.

Then, three weeks in, he tries to hack Ianto’s secure files.

“Ianto?” Jack asks with a cheerfulness that doesn’t reach his eyes. The edges of his grin aren’t as wide as they’d normally be, and there’s no hiding the dark bags under his eyes that have been gradually coming into existence over the last few weeks.

Ianto gestures. “Have a seat.”

“What’s up?” Jack asks, sitting down across from him.

The lack of the follow-up salacious come on is what reminds Ianto that he and Jack still aren’t on great terms, that Ianto had screwed up last month, and that this meeting isn’t going to help anything but he’s holding it anyway. He’s the boss. He has to.

“You tried to hack into my secure files, last night,” Ianto says, without preamble.

Jack blanches for the briefest second, but then he pastes on a sheepish look. “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I got your ID number mixed up with Owen’s, I was just looking for his porn stash. I’ve heard it’s quite extensive.”

“Those files are secure for a reason, Jack,” Ianto says, ignoring Jack’s explanation. “There are things in there that could endanger the safety of the human race, of the existence of this very planet, if they got out. Moreover, I don’t appreciate you sneaking around behind my back. I don’t abide by the ‘forgiveness before permission’ policy.”

Jack looks deeply uncomfortable. “Right. But, like I said, I was just looking for Owen’s porn stash, so… you know.”  

“Why are you here, Jack?” Ianto asks.

“You called me in he—” Jack stops at Ianto’s look. He sighs, and gives Ianto a somewhat annoyed look of his own. “I’ve already told you. Twice. Possibly thrice. Is this something that you ask everyone on routine basis? Because this would be a really great way to incite identity crises, if you’re looking to make someone quit.”

The hopeful look in his eye means that he’s thinking about Gwen, who Ianto will most certainly _not_ be firing.

“I ask because you have yet to tell me the truth,” Ianto replies.

Jack lets out a sudden, bitter laugh. “Oh, I owe you the truth, do I?”

“Jack, I allow you hold the future of the planet in your hands every day,” Ianto replies. “I think, in return, the truth is a small price to ask.”

“I put my life in your hands every day,” Jack shoots back, “but I still don’t know why you look like you’re twenty-five but you’ve been running this place for the last eight years, or why there’s no record of a Ianto Jones working for Torchwood prior to 2000?”

“That, Jack, is a personal matter which is of no concern to Torchwood or to you,” Ianto snaps.

“And so are my reasons for staying with Torchwood,” Jack replies angrily.

“Jack,” Ianto says in a pained voice, wishing Jack would trust him enough to tell him, and hating that he can’t give Jack a reason to do so. “Please. Just tell me.”

“It’s none of your business,” Jack says curtly. He pushes his chair back, and looks at Ianto expectantly. “If that’s all?”

Ianto holds in a sigh. “Yes. That’s all. Please don’t try to hack my files again, Jack. You won’t get in, and I will know.”

“For the last time, it was an accident,” Jack says testily, and he stands and stalks out of the room, then stomps down the stairs to the Hub main.

Ianto lets the sigh come out now, long and slow, and sits back in his chair. He brings his hands up to rub at his temples.

He knows this can’t go on much longer, but he can’t bring himself to pull everything crashing down just yet.

 

 

Owen shows up in his doorway. In typical Owen fashion, he doesn’t wait for an invitation, just comes in and stands in front of Ianto’s desk, arms folded over his chest.

Ianto waits, eyebrows raised.

“Not that I actually care,” Owen says, “but Harkness has been looking increasingly worse over the past two weeks. Do I need to give him a lecture on the values of a healthy diet and regular sleep cycle?”

“He’s coping,” Ianto says.

“Coping from _what?_ ” Owen demands. “It’s been a month since he almost died of that sex alien gas thing. It’s a little late to be coping.”

Ianto shrugs. He could remind Owen that Jack is one of the thirty-one survivors of Canary Wharf, and that after living through something like that, people don’t just bounce back. Sometimes, it takes a while. Sometimes, people get reminded and they have to deal with it all over again. Sometimes, the way people deal with things doesn’t make sense.

However, he knows that that isn’t why Jack is running himself ragged, so he doesn’t say that.

Instead he tells Owen that he’s welcome to give Jack a physical and a lecture, and sends him on his way.

 

 

Ianto watches Owen threaten to give Jack a physical and a lecture. Jack responds with a leer and an innuendo. Owen throws up his hands in disgust and gives up.

 

 

Ianto wakes up to find a rose petal in the bottom of his empty coffee mug.

_“—no, God no, please, not him—”_

He throws up in the sink, cleans it up with shaking hands, and then pitches the entire pot of his special brew.

 

 

The following day a pedophile named Goodson winds up dead in a Cardiff PD cell, his throat stuffed with wet lumps of rose petals.

“We’ll take it from here,” Ianto tells Detective Swanson, clenching and unclenching his left hand behind the body, where no one can see it. “Thanks.”

Swanson gives him a nod and turns on her heel. Ianto waits until the sound of her heels clicking in the hallway mostly fades, and then stands and turns to face his team. He is very carefully composed, and when he speaks, he makes sure his voice is even.

“There’s nothing we can do for this man,” Ianto tells them. “The creatures that did this are—their power is limitless. They control the elements without effort, and they abide by no law or conscience. We’ll take his body back and use it as stock.”

“You mean to say that there’s something out there killing people at random, and we’re not to do anything about it?” Gwen demands.

“Involving ourselves further would be to sign our own death warrants, Gwen,” Ianto says.

“What about UNIT?” Jack asks. “We can’t just _allow_ some creatures to go around murdering people. That’s the point of Torchwood!”

“In case you lot forgot,” Owen puts in, “this bloke here’s a pedophile. No one’s exactly mourning his loss.”

Gwen and Jack have twin expressions of indignation on their faces.

“The case is closed,” Ianto says with finality. “Now start prepping the body for transport.”

 

 

That night, Tosh notices strange weather patterns—it appears to be raining on one woman’s house, and her house alone. A quick search reveals that she’s Estelle Cole, and elderly fairy enthusiast, and Ianto is unsurprised to find her dead in her garden by the time they arrive.

Gwen immediately rounds on Ianto.

“It’s the same as that man earlier today, isn’t it?” she demands furiously. “You said they control the elements, and now they’ve gone and killed some poor innocent old woman. What the _hell_ are these things?”

Ianto sighs. “They’re fairies. Not like the fairies you’ve seen on the telly, or read about in books—these fairies are dangerous. They’re as old as the earth, part of it, even, and they love nothing more than chaos and death. It amuses them.”

“What do you mean, they’re part of the earth?” Jack asks, looking startled by this idea. “They’re not—how do we know they’re not aliens?”

“It doesn’t matter what they are,” Ianto says flatly, “because we’re not getting involved. There’s literally nothing we can do to stop them if they decide to target us—which they will, the moment we start investigating—and I won’t have us all dying needlessly.”

“But can’t we—”

“No!”

Even Jack looks startled at Ianto’s tone.

Ianto takes a deep breath, and slowly releases it.

“No,” he says again, this time calmer. “No, we cannot. Now leave it.”

 

 

_She clutches her throat, eyes popping, nothing more than a croak emerging from her throat._

_“Anwyn!” he screams, but he can’t help her, he can’t fight against the wind, he can only press his fingers into his son’s struggling body, a terrible wind pulling tears from his eyes and shrieking giggles in his ear. “No, God no, please, not him—”_

_Something builds in his throat, and he can’t breathe._

_“No, no, no,” he wants to keep screaming, but he can’t, because he has no breath and his limbs are losing strength fast and the world is going dark._

_—his son struggles harder, his small, bony body sharp against his—_

_—she has crumpled to the ground, her petticoat fluffing up around her body and he can’t see her face—_

_—the world grows darker—_

_His son slips out of his grasp and runs, runs into the trees, laughing and skipping, and he’s sinking to the ground, losing his vision, dying, and he’s lost his wife and he’s lost his son and he can’t breathe and—_

His phone rings.

Ianto bolts upright in bed, breathing hard, and scrambles to find the phone before his mind can process the dream, can even think about it, and he answers breathlessly.

“Hello?”

“Ianto, thank god, you’ve got to come, it’s the fairies—”

“Gwen?” Ianto demands. “What—fairies?”

“There’s petals, Ianto! Petals all over my apartment! Jack and I were investigating them last night, just a little, but—”

“ _You were_ _what?_ ” Ianto practically thunders.

“I know, I’m really sorry,” Gwen says desperately, sounding close to tears. “We shouldn’t have, you told us not to. Please, Ianto, you have to tell me what to do!”

Ianto takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. His hands are trembling.

Not his team. Not Gwen, not _Jack_.

But what can he do against them?

“I’m on my way over right now,” Ianto tells her. “Have you been in contact with Jack?”

“No,” Gwen says. “Oh, god, do you think they were at his place, too?”

“Probably,” Ianto says. He’s changing his clothes with one hand, mind already spinning as it tries to come up with something, anything that would save Gwen and Jack if the fairies have decided to make them their next victims. He’s coming up blank. “Gwen, I’ll be there as soon as I can, and I’ll call Jack on my way. Just—just hang in there.”

 

 

Ianto learns that Jack actually hasn’t gone home yet, and had gone directly from investigating with Gwen to a fuck-buddy’s for “some really athletic sex—seriously, my quads are killing me right now”. Ianto tells him get his arse to the Hub, now, and then goes to pick up Gwen.

“Gwen says you were doing research on the fairies last night,” Ianto tells them, once they’re all at the Hub and sitting in his office.

Jack glances at Gwen. “You _told_ him?” he hisses.

“I was scared!” Gwen snaps. “They were in my apartment!”

Jack turns away, disgust on his face. Whatever temporary alliance they’d managed last night, it’s clearly been broken.

“Look, it’s not important,” Gwen says impatiently. “Ianto, look, Jack and I think that the fairies are here to collect their Chosen One—a child that they chose, protect, and then lure away. The children are never seen again.”

Ianto feels ice creeping through his veins, and he has to fight very, very hard to keep breathing.

Gwen leans forward earnestly. “We need to figure out which child it is they want, and stop them.”

Ianto can’t help the hollow, bitter laugh that escapes. “Stop them?”

“Something!” Gwen says helplessly. “We can’t just sit back and do nothing!”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Ianto replies.

“It’s a child, Ianto,” Jack says suddenly, leaning forward, desperation tingeing his voice. “A child with a family, friends, a whole life ahead of it.”

“No,” says Ianto, who can barely breathe. “No, and that’s the end of it. Disobey me again and you’re both suspended. Go home.”

They leave.

Ianto prays that this will be the end of it, but he has a sneaking suspicion that it isn’t.


	7. Jack

Jack could care less about being suspended. There’s a _child_ at stake.

Gwen apparently feels the same way, though she’s briefly reluctant to sneak out of the Hub when they see strange weather patterns over a primary school.

“I don’t know,” she says, looking troubled. “It’s just that I’ve already cocked up twice, and—”

“Which is more important, Gwen, your job or the life of this kid?” Jack demands, and Gwen sets her mouth in a grim, determined line.

They go to the school and determine that the girl’s name is Jasmine Pierce, and she’s been sent home early with all the other children. They drive to Jasmine’s house, Jack yelling at Gwen to change all the green lights and Gwen yelling back that she doesn’t know _how_ to. Jack grips the steering wheel tighter and prays that the fairies haven’t already gotten to her.

They’re going to save this little girl. Ianto is an unfeeling, secretive bastard, and he has no idea what it’s like for a family to lose their child. He’s clearly spend his whole life in Torchwood, hasn’t lost, hasn’t loved, hasn’t done anything but sit in his little underground base and write up paperwork for saving a world he doesn’t live in.

They’re going to save her.

Jack and Gwen tear out of the car as soon as it’s parked, running into the backyard of the Pierce’s house because there are screams coming from back there and all Jack can think is _we’re too late, we’re too late, we’re too late._

Jasmine is nowhere in sight. There’s a man being killed on the lawn, people screaming, a woman crying.

Jack opens his mouth to demand where Jasmine is, when suddenly there’s a sharp pinch at his neck and the world fades away.

 

 

Jack comes to and finds a tranq dart lodged in his neck, Gwen in a heap next to him with an identical dart in her own neck, and the dead body of the man still in the middle of the yard. All the guests have gone. Distantly, Jack can hear a wind shrieking and something speaking, a thousand voices in unison.

Jack struggles to his feet. His limbs are uncoordinated and weak, but terror at the thought of Jasmine being taken drives him forward, leaving Gwen alone with the dead man.

He follows the shrieks of the wind voices, though a hole in the fence and down a barely-there trail that leads him through a meadow and—

Jack’s heart nearly stops when he takes in the sight of a small honey-blonde girl in a sundress, standing at the edge of the woods. She’s standing at the center of some wind vortex, trees waving wildly, debris spinning everywhere, and at the very center with her are two adults, a woman and a man.

Ianto.

Ianto is holding the crying woman back, restraining her, and Jack goes cold.

“Ianto!” he screams, and a second later he’s slammed with a gust of wind so strong it nearly knocks him on his ass. He stumbles back but as soon as he has his balance again he fights to move forward, eyes burning, struggling to breathe against the pressure on his chest.

He can just barely make out the sight of the girl waving and smiling, and the mother reaching out for her desperately.

“Ianto, you bastard!” Jack screams into the wind. “You bastard, you fucking _bastard_ , don’t you dare let her go! I’ll kill you! I swear to fucking god, if you let her go—”

His screams are lost in the wind, Ianto not even appearing to hear him as Jasmine turns and starts to skip off into the forest.

Jasmine vanishes.

The wind vanishes.

Jack falls forward so suddenly that he barely catches himself, landing hard on his hands and knees. He crouches there in shock for the second it takes for the sobs of the mother to reach his ears, but as soon as they register his head comes up and he takes in the sight of the mother collapsed on the ground, utterly disconsolate.

He’s failed. He’s failed Jasmine— _Gray—_ and her mother— _his mother_ —

He failed them all.

With a primal roar, he lunges for Ianto.

Ianto is clearly too busy being a voyeur to the mother’s grief, probably curious at seeing what real human emotions look like, and goes down easily when Jack tackles him to the ground.

“ _Fuck you!_ ” Jack screams, blind from rage and tears and the vision of Gray being snatched up before his eyes, and the feel of his fist slamming into Ianto’s face only takes enough of the edge off for him to change tactics and grab Ianto by the shoulders, lifting him and slamming him back down into the ground. “What the _fuck_ , you fucking—”

He loses the ability to make words and lets out a strangled scream, landing another punch to Ianto’s face before he sees—

Sees—

Ianto’s _crying_.

Jack’s fist drops to his side and he stares at Ianto’s tearstained face uncomprehendingly. Emotions. Ianto Jones is expressing emotions.

“I had to,” Ianto sobs, reaching up to grip at Jack’s shoulders. His face screws up something terrible, and he heaves in a great breath. “I had to. They would have killed everyone if I hadn’t.”

Jack knows he’s right.

It doesn’t matter.

“Fuck you,” Jack snarls, shoving Ianto back onto the ground and pushing himself off of Ianto. His eyes go to the woods, where Jasmine and the fairies have all disappeared, and the wave of failure that slams into him is almost too much to bear.

He turns on his heel and stalks off.

 

 

Ianto is in his office with Gwen for nearly twenty minutes. Jack is still stuck in memories of Gray when Gwen exits Ianto’s office, and when Ianto calls him in he has to force himself to focus on the present.

Jack recounts everything that he and Gwen did over the past twenty-four hours to Ianto’s now-impassive face. It’s different now, though, because Jack has seen that face ripped apart by emotion. He knows that there’s a human being underneath it, even if Ianto’s cleaned off the blood and the tear-tracks and has his mask back in place now.

“All right,” Ianto says quietly, when Jack finishes with a ‘You know the rest’ after he describes arriving at Jasmine’s house. “That matches up with Gwen’s story just fine. You should know that you’re likely to find rose petals all over your flat, when you get home tonight.”

All Jack wants to do right now is rage at a punching bag. Avoiding his apartment for a few more hours won’t be a problem. His gym is open 24/7.

Ianto leans back in his chair and sighs, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.

Jack resists the urge to tell him to hurry the fuck up, he wants to get out of here.

“This is not the first time I’ve seen them come for a Chosen One, Jack,” he eventually says, opening his eyes. His voice is heavy. “The last time, the mother and father wouldn’t let the boy go. They physically held the boy back, and the fairies killed the parents so that the boy would be free to go.”

Jack frowns. “You were there?”

“I was—” Ianto looks away briefly, eyes containing some unknown emotion. “—there. I saw it. I couldn’t let that happen again, especially not to you and Gwen. I had no choice. They would have had Jasmine either way.”

Jack nods stiffly.

“But,” Ianto goes on, “I should have told you and Gwen. I got wrapped up in my own emotions, got secretive, as I tend to be—” He offers a self-deprecating grin. “—and neither of you understood the gravity of your actions. I’m sorry. I should have been more honest.”

Jack nods again. He can’t say that, even with that tidbit of information, he wouldn’t have done things exactly as he had the first time, but Ianto doesn’t need to know that.

“And I do understand that you thought you were doing the right thing,” Ianto continues, “but if I hadn’t been there today, Jack, you and Gwen would have both died, along with Jasmine’s mother. And Jasmine would still be gone. You and Gwen need to understand that I am the boss, and I don’t run a democracy here. If I give you orders, I have good reasons for them, and I expect them to be obeyed. I’m not suspending you two this time, because I’m also partially at fault, but just so you know, if it were any other case you’d be looking at a suspension and a write-up on your—”

Something beeps.

Jack checks his own cell phone even though he knows it doesn’t make any sounds like that (he’s got everything set to vibrate, and he makes every effort to keep his phone as close to his crotch as possible). Unsurprisingly, it’s not his phone. He looks up, and is puzzled to see that Ianto’s fiddling with his leather wrist-strap.

“That thing beeps?” Jack asks.

He’s never even seen Ianto use it before.

“Yes,” Ianto says, fiddling with something on the strap that obviously means it’s more than just a fancy watch. “Sometimes.”

He fiddles a moment longer, then the beeping finally stops and he looks back up at Jack, a distracted look on his face.

“Right,” Ianto says. “Um.”

“Suspension?” Jack prompts.

“Ah! Yes. You’ll be suspended, and receive a permanent write-up on your record,” Ianto says. He pauses, frowning. “Um. Yes. I, er, think that covers everything, you can go. I’ve got to take care of something else. Sorry.”

If the events of today hadn’t happened— and if Ianto hadn’t decided to run away after taking Jack home and shagging him senseless—Jack might have offered to help with whatever it was Ianto had to do. Instead, Jack just nods and stands to leave.

He grabs his coat, checks that his keys are in the left pocket, and then goes over to shut down his computer when the Rift monitor catches his eye.

It’s the same as the night Gray came back.

Jack has stared at the Rift print-out from the night of Gray’s return long enough that he could draw it out from memory and right now, the screen is displaying it exactly, right down to the funny little downward spike.

His heart rate doubles.

What if—

Jack abandons his computer and bounds over to the stairs, taking them two at a time until he reaches the catwalk, and he’s feet from Ianto’s office door when he hears Ianto’s voice and realizes that Ianto is on the phone.

Jack stops outside, out of sight, and listens, his heart pounding to the tune of _Gray, Gray, Gray, Gray_.

“—yes, the highest-ranking person you’ve got on for tonight, please,” Ianto’s saying.

The night flashes before his eyes, the screaming and the struggling and the flashing lights.

_Gray._

_Gray._

_Gray._

“Thank you. Hello, Sergeant, this is Ianto Jones over at Torchwood. I wanted to let you know that we’ve got a code B7209 on the bridge—”

_“—a code B7209—”_

Jack chokes.

_“—code B7209—”_

The Hub disappears.

_Gray screams and struggles, Jack fighting against his own captor with all his might and—_

_Lights flash._

_It’s the police. They’re saved, the police are here, they’ve been looking for Gray, they’re here to help._

_The man holding Gray sighs and says, “Buggering fuck—tell them this is a code B7209 and Torchwood has it under control, would you?”_

_Someone leaves._

_Jack feels his heart drop into his stomach, and he stares up at the face of the man holding Gray in utter despair and—_

_It’s Ianto._

“Jack?”

It’s Ianto.

Ianto’s face now and Ianto’s face twenty years ago flash before his eyes, merging and unmerging like double-vision, and they’re the exact same.

“Jack, are you all right?” Ianto’s asking, face tinged with concern.

It occurs to Jack that he’s on the floor slumped against the wall, and that he can feel tears pouring down his face, but it doesn’t matter.

“You were there,” he chokes out, staring Ianto as the two faces begin to fade away into one. “You were there, you were the one—”

Ianto goes pale and jerks back “No—”

“You were the one holding Gray. All those years ago, it was you. Wasn’t it?”

“Jack, you have to let me explain—”

“You took my brother,” Jack accuses, and he doesn’t even care that you can hear tears in his voice. “You _took_ my brother.”

Ianto swallows. “I had to, Jack. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Jack reels.

“Why—how did you—”

Ianto takes in a deep breath, and offers Jack a wan smile. “I’ve been working for Torchwood for a long time. Jack, sometimes the Rift takes people—they get sucked into the Rift and deposited somewhere else in space and time. Anywhere. And sometimes, very rarely, the Rift will bring a person back.”

Jack’s mouth goes dry. “Gray—”

“Gray was taken by the Rift, when he went missing,” Ianto confirms. “And then he was returned months later.”

“So you took him,” Jack says, straightening. Fury is beginning to stir in his veins, the shock finally wearing off. “He’d been touched by the Rift, he’d seen too much, and so you took him!”

“Jack, we had to,” Ianto says. “You must know that. We couldn’t just let him loose.”

Jack’s heart constricts. His fists clench. “Right. Because if it’s alien, it’s ours. What’d you do to him, huh?”

Ianto’s eyes widen. “No, b—”

“What’d you _do_ to him?” Jack demands, surging off the wall and grabbing Ianto by the collar, yanking in him forward. “Did you kill him? Huh? Did you put him down like you put down the Weevils, or did you give him a nice little injection and just let him go to sleep?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Ianto says breathlessly. “They wanted to, said he was too dangerous, but—”

“Dangerous?” Jack repeats incredulously. “He was eight!”

Ianto frowns. “Jack, he was mentally deranged!”

“ _What?_ ”

“You—don’t you remember?” Ianto asks, looking genuinely surprised.

“What I remember,” Jack says through gritted teeth, “is my brother screaming for me. I remember the terror on his face, and how desperate he was to get to me, and how I failed him.”

A strange look passes over Ianto’s face. “Jack,” he says slowly, “I think… I think there’s something that you should watch.”

 

 

Ianto sets Jack up with the computer in his office, pulling up a file from some database that he has to type in three different passwords to access, and then promises to return to the Hub to answer Jack’s questions in about twenty minutes.

“Someone just came through the Rift,” Ianto explains distractedly. “As soon as I get him situated, I’ll return, all right?”

Jack nods, eyes straying to the file Ianto’s pulled open on the computer.

_Harkness, G.R. | 16-8-1986 | 000B7209-74-00032_

This is it. The case report. After spending his entire adult life searching for the answers to what happened to Gray that summer evening, all those years ago—this is it.

His eyes skim over the reports filed (none filed by Ianto Jones, but there’s one filed by an Emrys Jones in Ianto’s handwriting, and Jack doesn’t have time to concern himself beyond that).

 _…apprehended child… …brother was present at scene, retcon administered…_ _…mentally unstable… ...TR administered, relocating to Aberystwyth… …continued surveillance by E. Jones…_

A video file catches his eye just as he goes to click on the third report, and he can’t resist.

Jack takes in a deep breath, prays that it isn’t Gray being tortured, and plays the file.

_Gray is screaming._

_They have him in a cell downstairs, the video camera set up so that only the cell is visible, and Gray is pressed right up against the glass, screaming, beating his fists against the glass, tears pouring down his face. In the clarity of the camera, not his own fuzzy memories, Jack realizes that Gray’s face is older. He’s not taller, but his face is a year or two older—ten, maybe?_

_“It’s all right,” Ianto’s voice comes from next to the camera. “It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you. We just want to ask you a few questions.”_

_“Jack!” Gray shrieks._

_“Who’s Jack?” Ianto asks. “Is it Jack, your older brother?”_

_And Gray goes silent, slumping forward. His head falls forward with a thump against the glass, and he pants._

_“No,” Gray says, after a minute. His voice his hoarse, little more than a whisper. “I used to have a brother named Jack, but he abandoned me. He didn’t come for me. I waited and he didn’t—”_

_Gray’s fingers curl into the air holes of the glass wall._

_“Gray, you were taken by a rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff,” Ianto’s voice explains calmly. “Jack couldn’t have helped you.”_

_“I’m going to kill him,” Gray says evenly._

_“I know you’ve been through an ordeal—”_

_Gray slams his whole body into the glass panel, eyes bugging out of his head as he stares at an off-camera Ianto. “You don’t understand,” he says through gritted teeth. “I was so close. I saw him, after all this time I saw him and I was going to finally make him pay.”_

_“Gray—”_

_“I’m Slave 079902!” Gray shrieks._

_A pause._

_“You think I haven’t done it before?” Gray asks, his voice cracking from the screaming. “I have. I’ve killed people. You wrap your hands around their necks and you squeeze and you squeeze and you squeeze, until you can’t feel anything moving under your fingers. Then they’re dead.”_

_“And that’s what you’d do to your big brother?” Ianto’s voice asks, sounding only curious._

_“I’ll kill you too if you don’t let me out of here,” Gray replies._

_“You’ll have a hard time doing that from inside the cell,” Ianto points out._

_And Gray flips._

_He lets out a scream and starts beating his fists against the glass, screaming “Jack, I’m going to kill Jack, let me have him, Jack! Jack! I’ll kill you, Jack! I’ll kill you! I’ll—_

Jack grips the edges of the desk, the memory of that night playing clearly in his head for the first time, and he works not to vomit.

He remembers Gray screaming his name.

_“Jack! Jack!”_

_—Gray twisting, fighting Ianto’s grip, face contorted horribly—_

_“I’ll kill you, Jack! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”_

Jack dives for the trashcan and vomits once, tries to breathe, then vomits again.

 

 

The next thing he’s aware of other than the sound of his own breathing is Ianto.

Ianto doesn’t force him to get up off the ground. He sits down on the ground next to Jack and leans back against his desk, then pulls Jack against his chest and holds him as he trembles, not crying, not speaking, just breathing harshly and trembling uncontrollably.

He lets Ianto hold him for a long time.

“Is he dead?” Jack finally asks, not sure that he wants to know but unable to stop himself from asking. “Gray, is he dead?”

“No,” Ianto says quietly. “He’s alive and healthy.”

Jack nearly lets out a sob of relief.

“Is he—happy?”

“Yes.”

Jack closes his eyes.

“Can I see him?”

Ianto hesitates.

“ _Please_ ,” Jack says, clutching at Ianto’s shirt.

“Yes,” Ianto agrees. “But there are—conditions. You won’t be able to talk to him. And I don’t know how much seeing him will help.”

“I have to,” Jack insists, pulling away from Ianto to stare it him through stupidly tear-filled eyes. “I have to see him, Ianto, I have to see my little brother. I won’t let _that_ —” He glances up at the computer on Ianto’s desk, monitor gone dark from disuse. “—be my last memory of him.”

“Okay,” Ianto says softly, drawing his legs in and pushing himself off of his desk. “We can go see him.”

“Wha—now?” Jack asks, staring at Ianto in surprise and no small amount of panic.

“It’s just past six, Jack,” Ianto says. “The sun won’t be down for another three hours, it’s plenty of time. Unless you want to wait for—”

“Yes,” Jack says quickly, wiping at his eyes and pulling himself together. “Yes, let’s go. Right now.”

_Before I change my mind._


	8. Ianto

They drive west.

Ianto doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jack so on edge.

“I need to tell you a few things, before we get there,” Ianto says, and he checks to see that Jack is paying attention.

Jack looks incredibly grateful for the distraction from his own thoughts.

“As you know, Gray was taken by the Rift, and then returned a few months later,” Ianto says, and he glances at Jack again before continuing. “Back in the eighties, Torchwood Three was a bit different. We didn’t…” He pauses again. “If you get taken by the Rift, the chances that you’ll land somewhere safe for a 21st century human are practically non-existent. People who come back through the Rift have almost always been through severe trauma.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Jack shudder. He allows a moment for Jack to pull himself together before continuing.

“It used to be that if people who came back through the Rift weren’t mentally stable, they were killed. It was thought that nothing else could be done. But I worked with a brilliant, wonderful man named Dylan Evans to create an alternative for them—he called it Tabula Rasa.”

“Blank slate,” Jack translates, sounding numb.

“Yes,” Ianto says, stealing another glance.

He regrets having this conversation in the car, but if they’d waited and had it in his office, he doesn’t know if they would have been able to see Gray tonight.

“Tabula Rasa is based off of retcon, but unlike retcon, you can wipe more than a year or two without risking mental instability,” Ianto explains, focusing on the road again. “It does a complete memory wipe, from birth. The person is left without a single personal memory.”

Ianto glances over.

Jack is silent, visibly digesting this piece of information. Ianto gives him a few minutes to process, then moves on to the next bit of information before Jack can get completely caught up in his thoughts.

“The Tabula Rasa is more stable than retcon, but if a person is triggered… The one time it happened, four people were brutally murdered before we were able to capture her,” Ianto tells him. “That’s why you can’t talk to Gray, or let him see you. The results of triggering him would be disastrous.”

Jack is pale.

“I’m sorry,” Ianto says, even though it’s meaningless.

“It was my fault, you know,” Jack says, eyes unfocused. “That he got taken. I wanted to race, he wanted to hold hands and run together, because he knew I was faster and I’d win. But I had to win. And when I looked back, he was gone. That was it.”

“Jack, you couldn’t have known. You couldn’t have done anything.”

Jack doesn’t respond.

Ianto opens his mouth to continue to persuade him that it wasn’t his fault, but then closes it when he realizes that now isn’t the time. He turns back to driving, and leaves Jack to his thoughts.

 

 

They arrive in a town just outside of Pembroke. They haven’t spoken since Ianto had explained the ramifications of the Tabula Rasa, and though he hasn’t said anything to Jack, it’s obvious that their journey is coming to an end. They’re off the motorway and driving down streets featuring rows of adorable little houses, with real front lawns instead a few steps that lead directly to the sidewalk.

Jack is absolutely silent, his shoulders visibly tense.

Ianto had locked the SUV at some point on the motorway, when the hum of the road would obscure the sound of the locks chucking into place, and then he’d flipped on the child safety feature that prevented any other lock-controls from being operational save for his own. Jack hasn’t noticed yet. Ianto really hopes that it doesn’t come to Jack noticing.

He makes a right onto another street featuring rows of houses, but this time he slows down further.

The house is just there, on the right. Ianto can see a lone figure in the front lawn.

They come to a stop on the left side of the road, and Ianto kills the engine.

“That’s where he lives,” Ianto says, nodding at the house where a little girl, no more than three, is dressed in a bathing suit and playing with the hose.

Jack sucks in a sharp audible breath.

“His name is William Nash, though he prefers Will. He’s been married to a woman named Colleen for the last five years, and that’s their daughter there, Claire.”

Jack stares at the little girl on the lawn.

“Tell me more,” he says hoarsely, not taking his eyes off of her.

“He’s a postman, but he likes to play piano for pubs whenever he can. He completely totaled his car at seventeen, walked away without a scratch. Went to uni to study philosophy for a bit, but dropped out. Hates cats with a passion.”

Ianto stops talking when he sees Jack’s face tighten, and he reaches over to take Jack’s hand.

Jack grabs on fiercely, and squeezes. Hard.

They sit and watch Claire play with the hose, shrieking when she gets herself wet and dropping the hose, only to pick it up moments later. She tramples through the bushes up front with the hose in hand, and then pours water onto the side of the green car in the drive. Her hair is light brown and curly, and her bathing suit has some cartoon character or other on it.

Then the front door opens and a tall, broad-shouldered man steps out.

“Gray,” Jack breathes.

Ianto grips Jack’s hand hard, praying that Jack won’t lose his senses and try to charge over to his little brother, despite Ianto’s warnings and very best precautionary measures.

But Jack doesn’t move.

He just sits there, tears pouring down his face, as Gray persuades his daughter to come inside. Claire drops the hose and goes running inside. Gray watches her go past with a fond look on his face, and then obligingly goes out and shuts off the hose, rolls it up and puts it away on a hook on the side of the house.

Gray gives their SUV a strange look, and Jack squeezes Ianto’s hand so hard that Ianto swears he can feel the bones grinding together. It’s agonizing. Ianto can practically see Jack physically restraining himself, lips moving to words that Ianto can’t hear.

Then Gray looks away and heads back into the house, closing the door behind himself.

Jack falls forward in his seat, yanking his hand out of Ianto’s and pushing his forehead up against clenched fists. The sun is setting, and Ianto knows that Gray won’t be coming out again. Every time he’s visited, which has been quite often over the last few months in some attempt to assuage his guilt over keeping this a secret from Jack,  Claire is always in by eight, probably so that she can have a bath and get to bed so that Gray can get up early for his post route in the mornings.

So he starts up the car and focuses on the road, attempting to give Jack as much privacy as he can.

 

 

The drive back is a blur.

Ianto has been keeping this secret from Jack or months, now. He’s not used to exposing secrets. His ability to put the importance of keeping secrets over his own emotional well-being has always been one of his best qualities.

He’s strongly tempted to retcon Jack.

 

 

When Ianto pulls up to Jack’s flat, he parks the SUV and kills the engine, turning to look at Jack.

“How is this kinder?” Jack asks in a hoarse voice, not even looking at him. “My brother is dead. Everything he was, he knew, he loved—he’s dead. And there’s someone else living in his body. Tell me how this is kinder.”

“I’m sorry,” Ianto says.

“Is this what you’re going to do to that guy?” Jack asks, turning to look at him now. “The one who just came through the Rift, that you had to sort out before we left. You’re just going to wipe him out?”

“There’s a facility, now,” Ianto tells him softly. “It’s called Flat Holm. It’s for victims of the Rift, for them to try to heal.”

“And how many have gotten better?”

Ianto swallows. “None.”

Jack doesn’t reply.

Ianto considers the bottle of retcon in his pocket. He thinks about Jack clutching his hand and staring at his brother who is no longer his brother. He thinks about Jack leering at him as he pulled himself up on the bar in Ianto’s office. He thinks about Jack’s mouth on his, and Jack writhing in agony in a cell, and Jack attempting to bargain his way into Torchwood with an alien water bottle and a mucus-clearer.

He thinks about Jack spitting words at him in his office, face twisted in hurt and anger.

He thinks about Jack telling him that what happened to Suzie wasn’t his fault.

Ianto takes in a deep breath.

“I know that everything you’ve ever done for the last twenty-two years has been another step toward finding Gray,” Ianto says at last, looking at Jack even if Jack won’t look at him. “I know that’s the only reason that you joined the RAF, the only reason you joined Torchwood, the only reason you came searching for a job here in Cardiff, and possibly the only reason that you slept with me—”

Jack’s head snaps around to stare at him, mouth open, and Ianto waits but no words come out. Eventually, Ianto continues.

“—so I want you to take the rest of the week and figure out what it is you’re doing with your life now,” he says. “Why you’re here. What you want. And if you decide that you want to stay with Torchwood, show up for work on Monday. If you don’t want to stay, I’ll take care of everything.”

“Would you retcon me?” Jack asks.

“Yes,” Ianto replies, without hesitation.

“Would you miss me?”

Ianto pauses, but he can’t deny Jack the truth. Not now.

“Yes.”

Jack looks away, and puts his hand on the door handle. “Good night, Ianto.”

“Good night,” Ianto replies, though really, it hasn’t been.

Jack slams the door behind him.

 

 

Ianto spends the whole week debating whether or not to retcon Jack if he decides to stay with Torchwood. With each day that passes, he knows it will be increasingly difficult to get the level of retcon right and explain the missing three days, four days, five days…

But when he emerges from his bunker at six on Monday morning, well before anyone is supposed to be in, and sees Jack doing pull-ups on the bar in his office doorway, Ianto is overcome with the sensation of _right_.

“Good morning, Jack,” Ianto says, when he’s regained control. He finishes coming up the ladder and stands, watching Jack.

Jack grins, and pulls himself all the way up. “Morning. Decided to add to my morning work-out. Those chin-ups just weren’t doing it for me anymore.”

Ianto rolls his eyes. “Right. I take it you decided to stay, then?”

“I’ve got a new purpose in life,” Jack says. He drops from the bar, sweaty and red-faced but only panting a little. “I’m going to find out what you were doing in Torchwood in the 1980’s.”

Ianto raises his eyebrows, despite the flare of alarm he feels at the thought of having yet _another_ of his secrets exposed. “Are you going to try to hack my computer again?”

He makes a note to change the encryptions of his files.

“Nope,” Jack says, and he takes a step toward Ianto. “I’m going to gain your trust, and hope that one day you’ll tell me. Because I didn’t sleep with you for Gray. I slept with you because I think you’re gorgeous and funny and also, I’m just a little bit in love with you.”

Silence.

“Oh,” Ianto says dumbly. “You—really?”

“Give it another month, and I think I’ll be up to smitten,” Jack confirms, a slightly sheepish look on his face. “And, you know, someone’s got to be here to keep Gwen in line. With me gone, she’d have you rehabilitating Weevils by the end of the summer.”

By now, there’s a small smile on Ianto’s face that he could shove away, if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.

“So, can I have a hug?” Jack asks, grin widening and his arms spreading, coming forward—

“Absolutely not!” Ianto cries, jumping back. “You’re covered in sweat, I just got this suit two weeks ago!”

“I’ll take a shower!” Jack says brightly, turning around and heading for Ianto’s office door. “And change my clothes. Then can I have a hug?”

“Yes, Jack,” Ianto replies, having regains his sense of calm that Jack had somehow managed to startle him out of. He has a tendency to do that, actually. “Then you can have a hug.”

He hears Jack laughing all the way down the stairs.

Ianto reaches into his pocket for the bottle of retcon resting there, ready to be used. He glances at the bottle as he pulls it out, and then opens his bottom desk drawer and drops the retcon in. This done, he goes to make himself a pot of his special brew.

He won’t make a cup for Jack, not yet.

But maybe in a few weeks.

\- fin -


End file.
